From: vlf@star.enet.dec.com

I have been a bit gabby of late, some pontifications, delivered
ex-cathedra, from my lay-z-boy recliner, ensconced in dressing gown
and slippers, laptop perched on a dinner tray.

Rummaging through the to-do list shoe box of remaining paper scraps,
scribbled on, for what I wanted to say about matters VMS, are the
following:

1. A Digital Press Redux

The digital press imprint was hoovered up by the Butterworth-Heineman
publishers back in the day, and in turn Butterworth-Heineman, became
an imprint of the Elselvier publishers, and the digital press imprint
is not even listed, currently, an imprint buried in a imprint:

https://shop.elsevier.com/book-imprints

The only digital press publication I could find, as a Mr Magoo
net-sleuth, was:

https://shop.elsevier.com/books/openvms-alpha-internals-and-data
structures/goldenberg/978-1-55558-159-6

Slim pickings, indeed, but, at least, it's available as a picture
perfect PDF, and not as that horrid, hideous, homuculi, of a good book
- the e-book format.

Suffice to say that the digital press back catalogue is not getting
worked in any way shape or form.

It would be lovely (many things VMS would be lovely!) if VSI sought to
purchase the digital press imprint and the rights to back catalogue,
from Elselvier, and to resurrect, at least, all the publications
pertaining to VMS, as a mark of respect to the DEC antecedent of VSI,
but also to provide very practical guides for newcomers, and old
hands, on matters VMS.

Whilst there would probably never be any paper publications, the DP
VMS books can live on, in picture perfect perpetuity, as PDF files,
indeed to maximise their facility as reference books, the
meta-structure of all the PDFs could be upgraded to conform to the
cross-reference excellence of the "ThermoBook" - Thermodynamics and
Chemistry, by A/Prof. Howard DeVoe:

https://www2.chem.umd.edu/thermobook/downloads.htm

(The first PDF link demonstrates the thorough table of contents,
index, and cross-links excellence and diligence, required for a
practical PDF reference work)

All of the VSI/DP catalogue of VMS PDF's could be all made available
for a pepper-corn price of 20-30 Euros, so that there is only modest
impediment to collecting the whole set of VMS reference books, and the
authors could get some royalties, however modest, again.

Presumably, squirrelled away somewhere, Elselvier have the source word
processing documents to the books, and also the print-ready master
PDFs of the books.

So even if upgrading the PDF texts of the books to ThermoBook class
never comes to pass, the print-ready master PDFs could be made
available.

Which leads us to the great DEC VMS IDSM - which, without a doubt, is
the greatest internals and data structures manual of an operating
system that has ever been written - often emulated (in the Unix
world), but never bettered - it was an exemplary class act,
documenting an exemplary class operating system, published by a
exemplary class corporation.

The physical book itself was also a class act of the best of the
bookbinding craft, and it deserves to live on in picture perfect
perpetuity as a PDF - so that it can never fade from memory, or
quality attention anew.

The last time I had any correspondence with Ruth, was by e-mail, about
fifteen years ago (time does fly!), where the IDSM came up for
discussion. I don't know whether she's retired from Microsoft, if
she's still there, then, by definition, she's not doing anything
useful! - perhaps she could be persuaded to rebirth the IDSM as a
full-fledged PDF reference work, for posterity?

Here's hoping.

2. Living Museums of DEC software

DEC had as glorious past as we all know, both in hardware and
software.

The hardware is destined, eventually, to all fail, when the supply of
spare parts, eventually, dries up - however, the totality of glory of
the achieved software can live on, eternally.

As an acknowledgement, and tribute to, of where VSI/VMS came from, and
where it could still head, it would be lovely indeed if VSI
established "Living Museums" for VAX/VMS and AXP/VMS, using hardware
virtualisers, with all DEC layered products, and documentation,
installed - interested people can take a museum tour of it all,
appreciating the big picture, from non-privileged accounts, indeed,
they could be able to explore non-privileged application development.

Such historical momuments, for the permanent record, are long overdue.

Additionally, the source code for all the layered products, and
indeed, VAX/VMS and AXP/VMS, could be made available as well, so that
it is a complete curation - let the sunshine, of quality attention,
in!

BTB, a DeepSeek AI/LLM model trained on all of the VMS documentation
and Source Code, would be a fascinating thing to explore!

That's about it, these two broad-brush theses, and proposals.

--- SoupGate-DOS v1.05
 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)