[HECnet] FMS, SMG$, Windowing/Forms on a Text Terminal

[Brian Schenkenberger, VAXman-]

Hans Vlems <hvlems at zonnet.nl> writes:

That's the way I read it too and I happen to agree with that point of view :)
Until you understand things like pasteboards and displays SMG$ is pretty 
awesome. Calling it from Pascal doesn't make it easier I can tell you.

The pasteboard is the terminal screen.   Not a difficult concept.   You can,
normally, only create one pasteboard per terminal.   With the aid of a VMS
pseudo-terminal, you can circumvent this restriction.

Displays are "virtual terminals" of any size you declare them to be.   You
then position these on the pasteboard with SMG$PASTE_VIRTUAL_DISPLAY giving
the coordinates of where you want the display pasted.   Most other SMG$ APIs
work upon the virtual display(s).

As for DEC Pascal, I know not.   Despite Mr. Reagan's affection for it and 
his claims that it's one of the better VMS compilers, I've never used it.

For SMG$, all you really need is a way to pass by reference (pointer) and
the ability to define string descriptors.   I thought that Pascal created
string descriptors by default for its character strings.   I prefer to use
Macro when I call SMG$.   C can also be used but you need to roll your own
descriptors.   Fortran, as I recall, also had native descriptor creation in
its compiler.

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker       VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.