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Aucbvax.5239 fa.info-vax utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!info-vax Wed Nov 18 18:44:59 1981 Re: FORTH for the VAX and several queries >From obrien@RAND-UNIX Wed Nov 18 18:36:38 1981 1) If your TERM type is "aaa" EMACS tries to be clever and use an internal driver, which Gosling tried to write using some demo units. We have real production Ambassadors and I fixed up that part of EMACS; contact "Gosling@CMUA" to find out how to get a new VMS binary (we run VMUNIX). In the meantime, define a new entry in /etc/termcap like "aaa48" or something (we have a bunch of entries based on the number of lines we want on the screen at the moment), and EMACS will happily use TERMCAP, to your vast advantage. There is one bug in there: in the "is" entry you should replace the packet "\E[Q" with "\E[1Q" or EMACS won't work right. We wrote (and have now corrected) that particular entry so consider it blessed. It should appear in the next Berkeley release.

2) You're sure right about the lack of documentation, but it's not quite zero. You should have four volumes of manuals, Vol 1, and Vols. 2a, 2b, and 2c. In Vol. 2a there's something called "UNIX for Beginners" which while outdated will take you considerably farther than where you appear to be right now. (Vol. 2c was written at Berkeley, the rest at Bell. All should be delivered by Berkeley with 4.nBSD.) Also, Reston Publishing Co. in Reston, VA. has a new book out called "Using the UNIX System", by Richard Gauthier. This is a very frustrating book which looks like no one proofed it, but barring the typos it's a pretty complete beginner's intro to UNIX, including system administration.

Quite frankly your best bet would be to get in one of the many UNIX consultants in your area to set up your system and give you and the troops a pep talk on where to look for help. It's distressing but I've not been overly impressed with any of the commercially supported UNIXen, especially for the VAX. (NOTE: I freely admit to not having used any of them but have heard a sufficient number of tales to form a prejudice.) VMUNIX is the biggest VAX UNIX win by far but still requires some local wizardry to get around the sparse documentation.

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