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In VMS if you had a file named article.txt, each time you modified and saved it in editor, a new version was created named article.txt;1 article.txt;2 article.txt;3 and so forth. So after a long session of edit and saves you could end up with a hundred copies of file in your directory. A lot of clutter in the directory but easy access to older versions of the files.

And to get rid of the clutter, you just used the PURGE command. I really loved this aspect of VMS. :)

At glindra.org, I have published a set of open source command line utilities for Windows and Linux, that implement the VMS commands dir, copy, rename, delete, and purge.

All the programs support VMS-style file version numbers (in the same way that Emacs does). Other aspects, such as option names that can be truncated as long as they are unique, and suboptions within parentheses, are also inspired by VMS.

The utilities are not an attempt to emulate VMS exactly, however, but an independent design that is based on principles that I happened to like when I came across them under VMS.

Please feel free to have a look at them if you are interested.

[Under VMS] most of the commands were reasonably self-descriptive, and you could usually find what you wanted in help without too much trouble.

Yes, I loved VMS too.

When I first made contact with the command lines in both Windows and Unix, I was quite frankly shocked at how poorly either of them compared to DCL (Digital Command Language) under the VMS operating system.

Coming from VMS, I found the Unix command line syntax incredibly unintuitive, inconsistent, and just plain inconvenient. I know that the reason for this is that the various parts of it were designed and implemeted by different people at different times for different reasons. But the end result is just messy.

Under Windows, I found the command syntax more reasonable and sometimes even sensible. But here the problem was another one. Things that I naively thought were available on every platform, simply weren't there when I looked for them. Trying to replicate what would have been very easy in a DCL batch file under VMS, was either impossible or required lots of clever or complicated tricks.

It is of course easy to say that the system you know well always feels more senisble than a new one that you are trying to learn, and that is certainly true. But even so, I still think that the consistency and sheer good design of DCL did put it in another division than either Unix or Windows.

Anyway, if you're like me and still miss VMS though you now work under Windows or Linux, please feel free to have a look at my open source project Glindra. It is a set of command line utilities that run under Windows or Linux, and try to recreate the flavor of the VMS commands dir, copy, rename, delete and purge. They support file version numbers and the *** directory wildcard (meaning all subdirectories), much like VMS.

Other aspects, such as option names that can be truncated as long as they are unique, and suboptions within parentheses, are also inspired by VMS.

You can browse the documentation at doc.glindra.org to decide if you want to download and try them out.

[Under VMS] most of the commands were reasonably self-descriptive, and you could usually find what you wanted in help without too much trouble.

Yes, I loved VMS too.

When I first made contact with the command lines in both Windows and Unix, I was quite frankly shocked at how poorly either of them compared to DCL (Digital Command Language) under the VMS operating system.

Coming from VMS, I found the Unix command line syntax incredibly unintuitive, inconsistent, and just plain inconvenient. I know that the reason for this is that the various parts of it were designed and implemeted by different people at different times for different reasons. But the end result is just messy.

Under Windows, I found the command syntax more reasonable and sometimes even sensible. But here the problem was another one. Things that I naively thought were available on every platform, simply weren't there when I looked for them. Trying to replicate what would have been very easy in a DCL batch file under VMS, was either impossible or required lots of clever or complicated tricks.

It is of course easy to say that the system you know well always feels more senisble than a new one that you are trying to learn, and that is certainly true. But even so, I still think that the consistency and sheer good design of DCL did put it in another division than either Unix or Windows.

Anyway, if you're like me and still miss VMS though you now work under Windows or Linux, please feel free to have a look at my open source project Glindra. It is a set of command line utilities that run under Windows or Linux, and try to recreate the flavor of the VMS commands dir, copy, rename, delete and purge. They support file version numbers and the *** directory wildcard (meaning all subdirectories), much like VMS.

Other aspects, such as option names that can be truncated as long as they are unique, and suboptions within parentheses, are also inspired by VMS.

You can browse the documentation at doc.glindra.org to decide if you want to download and try them out.

[Under VMS] most of the commands were reasonably self-descriptive, and you could usually find what you wanted in help without too much trouble.

Yes, I loved VMS too.

When I first made contact with the command lines in both Windows and Unix, I was quite frankly shocked at how poorly either of them compared to DCL (Digital Command Language) under the VMS operating system.

Coming from VMS, I found the Unix command line syntax incredibly unintuitive, inconsistent, and just plain inconvenient. I know that the reason for this is that the various parts of it were designed and implemeted by different people at different times for different reasons. But the end result is just messy.

Under Windows, I found the command syntax more reasonable and sometimes even sensible. But here the problem was another one. Things that I naively thought were available on every platform, simply weren't there when I looked for them. Trying to replicate what would have been very easy in a DCL batch file under VMS, was either impossible or required lots of clever or complicated tricks.

It is of course easy to say that the system you know well always feels more senisble than a new one that you are trying to learn, and that is certainly true. But even so, I still think that the consistency and sheer good design of DCL did put it in another division than either Unix or Windows.

Anyway, if you're like me and still miss VMS though you now work under Windows or Linux, please feel free to have a look at my open source project Glindra. It is a set of command line utilities that run under Windows or Linux, and try to recreate the flavor of the VMS commands dir, copy, rename, delete and purge. They support file version numbers and the *** directory wildcard (meaning all subdirectories), much like VMS.

Other aspects, such as option names that can be truncated as long as they are unique, and suboptions within parentheses, are also inspired by VMS.

You can browse the documentation at doc.glindra.org to decide if you want to download and try them out.

[Under VMS] most of the commands were reasonably self-descriptive, and you could usually find what you wanted in help without too much trouble.

Yes, I loved VMS too.

When I first made contact with the command lines in both Windows and Unix, I was quite frankly shocked at how poorly either of them compared to DCL (Digital Command Language) under the VMS operating system.

Coming from VMS, I found the Unix command line syntax incredibly unintuitive, inconsistent, and just plain inconvenient. I know that the reason for this is that the various parts of it were designed and implemeted by different people at different times for different reasons. But the end result is just messy.

Under Windows, I found the command syntax more reasonable and sometimes even sensible. But here the problem was another one. Things that I naively thought were available on every platform, simply weren't there when I looked for them. Trying to replicate what would have been very easy in a DCL batch file under VMS, was either impossible or required lots of clever or complicated tricks.

It is of course easy to say that the system you know well always feels more senisble than a new one that you are trying to learn, and that is certainly true. But even so, I still think that the consistency and sheer good design of DCL did put it in another division than either Unix or Windows.

Anyway, if you're like me and still miss VMS though you now work under Windows or Linux, please feel free to have a look at my open source project Glindra. It is a set of command line utilities that run under Windows or Linux, and try to recreate the flavor of the VMS commands dir, copy, rename, delete and purge. They support file version numbers and the *** directory wildcard (meaning all subdirectories), much like VMS.

Other aspects, such as option names that can be truncated as long as they are unique, and suboptions within parentheses, are also inspired by VMS.

You can browse the documentation at doc.glindra.org to decide if you want to download and try them out.

HTML along the lines of using h1 through h6 is foolish, but I've (literally) never seen anyone use any heading smaller than h2.

I use all 6 heading sizes in the documentation I am writing for my open source project, and I don't think it looks that bad. Sure, I could have used some complicated/sophisticated publishing system that did all the layout as flash animations or whatever, but I think it's an advantage to be able to write the documentation as straight-forward text files that can be included in the tar-ball and that anyone can read with any browser.

Different headings are quite useful when you're trying to make documentation readable, so I really don't understand what the author of the article (and possibly you) have against them.