On 2015-10-19 20:43, Paul Koning wrote:
On Oct 19, 2015, at 2:30 PM, Johnny Billquist <b...@update.uu.se> wrote:
On 2015-10-19 19:42, Paul Koning wrote:
...
CTERM was an attempt to wrap a single protocol around the terribly inconsistent
semantics of the terminal drivers in all the DEC operating systems, and to
export as much as possible to the server end. ...
An interesting way to describe it.
I've always looked at CTERM as an RPC service that essentially have all the
functions of the VMS terminal driver. Makes it easy to implement in VMS, as you
have a 1:1 mapping. Makes it horrible for everyone else, since other systems do
not have the same functionality in the terminal driver, and now have to
implement all the remote procedure calls of the VMS terminal driver, and
somehow map that into how the native terminal driver works...
You can certainly view it as an RPC, and given that Cterm ended up basically
doing VMS, looking at it as the RPC version of the VMS terminal driver is
reasonably accurate. But the original version aimed to support both VMS and
TOPS-20 as primary clients, and other operating systems as well. So it was
supposed to be an RPC version of the union of all terminal drivers. Which
means that a full CTERM server (as opposed to client) would be hard to do for
everyone, even VMS.
The amount of swearwords from TOPS-20 people exceed all others combined,
in my experience. So if they intended CTERM to be something reasonable
for TOPS-20 it was an utter failure. :-)
And it's really silly and sad, considering that something like telnet is
very simple and straight forward, and can be done right on both VMS and
TOPS-20, and will in the end work much better for people connecting from
one to the other, than using CTERM...
(I have the same issues with CTERM under RSX. telnet makes so much more
sense.)
Johnny
