Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web pdp-10.trailing-edge.com

         December 28, 1983


         Dan Cobb
         LAN SWE, MR03-1/K20
         2 Iron Way, Box 1003
         Marlboro, MA 01752

         Dear Dan,

         Thank you for your letter regarding SED.  It looks like the
         VAX version of SED is becoming fairly widespread, especially
         among former TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 people.  I wish I had more
         positive information to give you about the questions you
         asked, but I don't have much more information at this time.
         I will try to address the questions you asked in your
         letter.

         Regarding the XON/XOFF problem, I don't yet have a solution,
         but it looks like one may be on the horizon.  I have
         investigated the problem and come to the conclusion that it
         is a problem with VMS itself.  This was corroborated by Dave
         Weaver, another former TOPS user now using the VAX version
         of SED.  The problem is in SED's use of the PASSALL mode for
         terminal input.  I use the temporary PASSALL mode for input
         so that VMS won't do anything with the terminal screen.
         Apparently when VMS has the terminal line in passall mode,
         it ignores any incoming XONs and XOFFs.  This means that if
         the terminal sends an XOFF while VMS is doing the output,
         the output can be stopped.  By the time the terminal sends
         the corresponding XON, the program is back waiting for input
         and VMS then ignores the XON, thus hanging the process.
         There are apparently some changes coming in VMS version 4.0
         that should eliminate this problem.  Dave Weaver said that
         there will be a PASSTHROUGH mode available with 4.0 that
         will pass all characters through to the program while
         observing the XON/XOFF protocol.  He said he might have a
         chance to try it on a system running a field test version of
         4.0 and will let me know the results.  If that will fix the
         problem, it surely would make a lot of people happy.

         Regarding VT102 support in SED, that should be very easy to
         implement.  It just involves adding another entry to the list
         of valid terminal types; for now the existing VT100 input

         and output tables could be used, since the VT102 can do all
         things the VT100 can do.  Eventually it would be useful to
         have a separate output table, since the VT102 can also do
         character inserts and deletes (I think).

         I have not yet investigated having DCL parse the SED command
         line, although I wouldn't rule that out as a future
         possibility.  I just haven't had time to look into that yet.

         I don't understand why the SED.EXE file on the tape had no
         definition for the VT100 up-arrow key; that definition has
         been in SED from the start.  There could possibly have been a
         problem with the tape.

         I will put your letter in my SED file, and I can notify you
         when I have a new version of SED ready to distribute.  I
         don't anticipate sending a new version until VMS 4.0 comes
         out, assuming I can solve the XON/XOFF problem at that time.

         Thanks for writing; if you have suggestions for improving
         SED, please don't hesitate to write.


				Sincerely,



				Paul Malquist