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HP OpenVMS Systems

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Internet tools and OpenVMS workstations?

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The Question is:

 
I'm submitting this to Ask The Wizard mainly because
an inquiry to VMS Product Management has gone
unanswered for many months.
 
That inquiry was about the "general isolation" of VMS
systems from the "rest of the Internet" due to
the lack of a couple of key "interchange" items.
At that time, I inquired as to whether anyone would
deal with the issue of handling ".pdf" files on
VMS. Was there any plan for Adobe to possibly
port Acrobat to OpenVMS/Motif, etc.
 
The more serious issue today concerns ongoing
support for Netscape. The current version on the
openvms.digital.com website is lagging far
behind the V4 ports available for other platforms.
 
Is any work taking place on porting Netscape
V4 to OpenVMS for either the VAX or AXP architecture?
 
It was rather depressing to read about the upcoming
demise of "VMS workstations" in another "Ask The
Wizard" note. I hadn't heard of THAT particular
WHAMMY before. Interestingly enough, details of
this decision don't seem to exist outside of
the Ask The Wizard pages (or if they do, they're
not immediately obvious anyway).
 
So, do I really finally have to give up and junk my VS4000/90
and AXP 3500 workstations simply because they're
increasingly unable unable to interact with the
outside world in a native fashion?
 
I just learned today that, internally at Oracle,
I'm going to *HAVE* to do something about my
email access in just under two weeks. Goodbye
"character mode." Netscape Communicator 4.0.6
or later will be required. I just hate the thought
of having to remote it from an AIX box, or
something like that just because there doesn't
seem to be a VMS port available.
 
Thanks,
 
John
 
 


The Answer is :

 
  PDF has been available for OpenVMS for some time now, in the form of
  the XPDF tool.
 
  Netscape Navigator Plus V5.0 for OpenVMS is expected this fall (in
  Beta) with general availability early next year (1999).  When this
  software is available, it will be included in the factory installation
  of OpenVMS, and will be licensed with OpenVMS.
 
  The OpenVMS VMSstation workstation has been discussed at the LA DECUS
  (1998), and has been widely discussed in the comp.os.vms newsgroup.
 
  JDK 1.1.6, Netscape FastTrack V3.01, and other Internet tools will be
  available with (or based on) the upcoming OpenVMS V7.2 release.  (The
  FastTrack beta is available now, for instance.)

answer written or last revised on ( 19-OCT-1998 )

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