Future, what future for PowerHouse

[Chris Sharman]

>As for PhD on OpenVMS (VAX and Alpha), the reference is to the PhD system of
>maintaining the PDL dictionary. At the moment our common code base (at the
>series 8 level) doesn't have PhD for maintaining PDL. Whether that remains
>true or not I can't say. Currently there are no plans to move PhD to the
>series 8 level. If you want to use a non-syntax interface, you can use
>Axiant to maintain your dictionary information and then generate PDL source.

I've used PDL once, and I'm not eager to repeat the experience: it's too much
hassle to remember yet another language, just for a dictionary. How does it go
with Axiant?: if it involves me putting a wintel box on my desk to do
development for VMS I'm not impressed.

>As for what we call VAXisms - mailboxes, print options, etc. - they are not
>in series 8 PowerHouse at the moment. When we merged the code for series 8,
>it was a generic base. In the interests of time, we added the year 2000
>enhancements to 7.10G (and 8.10) because it would have taken a lot of time
>to put the VAXisms back into 8.10. We are now investigating which VAXisms
>are really needed and which could be done through more generic features.

It obviously makes sense to support equivalent features on different platforms
with similar syntax, if that's what's meant by "more generic". I'd accept the
pain of having to do a one-time translation in that case.

If facilities are going to become unavailable/unsupported in future versions,
though, I'm quite concerned: I'm too VMS oriented to know what's different on
other platforms. Staying at 7.10G for evermore isn't really attractive either:
we were hoping to get something out of the web-enabling features.

We make extensive use of vmsdates, symbols, logicals, and print queues and
forms. I'm not too concerned about mailboxes myself, but don't they correspond
to unix pipes ?

Is there going to be any consultation process, or information ?
A list of features and an invitation for comments, here and/or in the supported
customers' area would allow me and others to assess whether we're likely to
have a problem.
______________________________________________________________________
Chris Sharman			Chris.Sharman@CCAgroup.co.uk
CCA Stationery Ltd, Eastway, Fulwood, Preston, Lancashire, PR2 9WS.
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