On Sat, 20 May 2023 08:55:54 +0100, Jack Zukt wrote:
> ... It was helish doing the transition to ISPF and CLIST.
>
I started with ISPF/CLIST, berore TSO REXX. I never wrote an ISPF Edit
macro in CLIST. I don't forgive CLIST for its apostrophe catastrophe;
seven consecutive apostrophes were not unusual.
CLIST and CMS EXEC have a "modal execution" facility which REXX
lacks, a sort of instream data akin to POSIX shell's "<<delimiter".
CMS Pipelines met the need with BEGOUTPUT delimiter.
I never understood &STR. I'm glad REXX does without it. I suppose
CLIST mavens have very clever uses for its lexical complexity.
Sometimes I wonder whether its lexical analyzer is Turing conplete,
but I don't need it.
> ... I still find VM help much better than MVS's.
>
It used to be even better. When I first encountered CMS, HELP used the
conventional command name search, so
HELP alias-name
... would show help for the associated command. inexplicably, that ability
was regressed in later releases.
> ... One of the first things that I
>do when starting on a new MVS system is to put an edit macro named QQ on
>the SYSPROC or SYSEXEC concatenation, so that I do not have to write
>CANCEL. I really do not like having that on a pfkey. Too much grief because
>of that.
>
+1. I never create a shortcut for "de'ete".
>I find that XEDIT environment capabilities permit us to tailor our working
>environment far more than ISPF but, as always, I think that has more to do
>with our path than with the products themselves.
>
I have written an interactive application using XEDIT as a display driver.
Reserved lines relative to top, middle, and bottom of screen are precious.
Couldn't imagine that in ISPF.
If I disconnect a terminal during an XEDIT session and reconnect with a
different terminal geometry, XEDIT politely refreshes the screen with
the new geometry. Why doesn't ISPF do that?
Can an XEDIT macro reside in a BFS file?
--
gil
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