UNIX vs VMS (or here we go again....)

[Leon Schilmoeller]

> 
>      I also have mixed VMS/Unix vaxes, and additionally have Unix on
> multiple machines other than my vaxes.  Every complaint you level
> against VMS is true for Unix.
> 
>      *roff as a word processor, Why not TeX?   How about databases?
> if you don't have 4bsd, where do you get your network support?  And if
> you think DECUS is fun for software, how about net.sources (provided
> you have a version of uucp/readnews that work together?)
> 
>      But UNIX is giving me a different headache.  I now have three
> kinds of computers running five kinds of Unix.  Programs from Version X
> won't run under Version Y, operator procedures are radically different,
> and the user interface varies.
> 
>      The REAL point I would like to make isn't that VMS is superior to
> UNIX in any sense.  (For each place where VMS is better, some version
> of UNIX is better somewhere else, and otherwise. . .)
> 
>      The REAL point is that a system which was integrated and well
> supported would allow more people to do more productive work than a
> system full of odd variants, half thought out ideas, and large
> quantities of Bugs.
> 
>      So why can't we herd UNIX off in that direction?
> 
> Marty
> 
> ----------

I marvel at all of the article referring to RUNOFF, nroff, *off as
word processing packages.  I like to refer to them as text formatters
and useful for documentation preparation, but I would not necessarily
call them word processors.  OA users would probably find difficulty
in relating these packages to word processing also!