🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BzGn32.37C@dscomsa.desy.de> Hallam@zeus02.desy.de writes:
> 1) Online manual still designed with aim of minimizing disk space rather than
> providing information.

Well, it's better than most systems which provide no online manual at all, or
provide one that requires some fancy hardware/software combination to use, and
can only be used from one seat at a time.

> 2) No help facility.

It's a fair cop, but in general I find I rarely use the help facility on VMS
unless I *can't* get to the offline manual and need to find an option. A help
facility is no replacement for a tutorial, and a tutorial and manual is more
useful than any of the three.

> 3) No standardized user firendly shell.

A fair cop, but there have been pretty nice front ends. I think that this will
show up in a matter of time as windows finally filter down to the commodity
market.

> 4) Command qualifiers hard coded into applications making multilanguage
> customization impossible.

I wouldn't want multilanguage customization of command qualifiers. Help
messages and error messages, yes, I'll go with that.

> 5) Requires expensive expert to have a chance of any security.

A fair cop, and I blame the vendors. It's not HARD to ship a system with
good default security. SCO claims to.

> 6) File system limited to sequential file, forcing applications to create
> their own file system on top of the UNIX one, thus preventing any
> standardization or application independent optimization.

On the other hand, there are some very strong traditions about file formats
and semantics that have proven extremely useful, and are one of the reasons
UNIX is so popular.

> The kernel is a major factor in determining how useful the system is. Only
> AT&T had the capability to introduce a shell to replace the standard ones
> that could have achieved a degree of acceptance. 

Um, the kernel and shell are separate components. Which are you talking about?

> If UNIX was ever allowed to become the sole O/S it would halt O/S deelopment
> completely.

Actaully, UNIX has allowed a lot of OS research that would otherwise be
impossible. By providing a useful lowest comon denoinator interface people
have been able to spend more time on the operating system and less time
reinventing the wheel. The amount of variety "under the hood" of UNIX and
UNIX-like systems is incredible.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Ferranti International Controls Corporation                'U` 
Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012 USA
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