friendly messages

[stpeters at dawn.steinmetz]

In article <22569 at ism780c.isc.com> patrick at ism780c.UUCP (Patrick Curran) writes:
>Yes, VMS's messages can be irritatingly wordy.  However, it is possible
>to customize the message system to behave the way you want it to.

Not really.  For example, if you turn off all the components, you
never get *any* error messages, which is a bit more terse than even
UNIX.  However, even if you have the messages turned off, VMS will
still inform you that you've logged off.  Rather handy, that. :-)

There are other things too.  Fortunately, I don't have to use VMS much
anymore, so I don't remember what they are, but they were once a pain.

>The result is a much cleaner interface; ...
>Sounds to me like a big win over the current
>state of affairs in the UNIX world.  The sooner we implement something
>similar, the sooner we'll be taken seriously in the real world where
>people run applications rather than hack software.

>Patrick Curran (uunet!ism780c!patrick)
>INTERACTIVE Systems Corp, Santa Monica, CA. (213) 453-8649

Well, Pat, we were once an all VMS site.  Management was a little slow
noticing that 1) most of the applications we ran were ported from
UNIX, and 2) every time they bought a VMS machine they wound up
shelling out thousands of dollars for INTERACTIVE's UNIX emulation.

Finally, they let us have real UNIX.  We've been happily running
applications ever since.  More and more the business components of GE
have been doing so as well.
--
Dick St.Peters                        
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY
stpeters at ge-crd.arpa              
uunet!steinmetz!stpeters