Subject: VIRTUNIX ange-ftp.el and VMS

From: Ronan Waide <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 96 09:54:21 +0000 (GMT)

Hi all,

the ange-ftp.el that Chris Szurgot is serving out from
http://www.itribe.net/virtunix/emacs will support connection to VMS
hosts as a result of two weeks of toying with the damn thing until it
worked. However, as someone else commented, much of the VMS support
stuff has been commented out by RMS. The upshot of this is that you
can connect, traverse directories - with completion - and retrieve
files from a VMS host, but the dired functionality is completely
hosed, since the commented-out code was used to reformat the VMS-style
dir listings into an 'ls -l'-style format. Points of note when using
ange-ftp to a VMS host:

1. Use '$$' where you mean '$' in the VMS directory spec.

2. You need to specify at least /LOGICAL$$NAME:/000000/ as a minimum
   path name before you can start using completion - this is fixable
   and probably should be fixed, but it's an ange-ftp rather than a
   nt-emacs problem, and I understand that ange-ftp is being replaced
   by efs Real Soon Now. Notwithstanding this, I may go back and hack
   it some more depending on how much it annoys me :)

3. VMS FTP likes upper case. You type in lower case (most of the
   time). This necessitates much shifting and capslocking
   unnecessarily, since VMS can't differentiate case at the filesystem
   level. I have fixed this in my own ange-ftp.el, but I can't recall
   if it's in the one I sent to Chris. Again, this is ange-ftp's
   problem rather than nt-emacs'. Note also that ange-ftp is full of
   comments about how there's no standard VMS FTP server, and case
   handling is one of them. I suppose it could be hacked to try upper
   AND lower case the first time it matters, and then set a flag to
   handle cases on that host thereafter. Hack hack.

Oh, and while I'm on ange-ftp: Has anyone else seen a problem with the
nt-friendly ftp program blocking/interfering with active telnet
connections on the same Win95 box? The situation as I understand it
(on /my/ machine) is that if ftp is busy with a large file (reading or
writing) and a telnet session generates more than a few characters of
traffic in either direction, the telnet screen freezes up - the
connection is still live, but completely unusable.

Waider.
-- 
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