Help System for Application Development

[Chris Summerfield]

Thanks to Willem and ShyGuy for your comments and suggestions. WRT Java, our standard for Java is 1.4.1, which appears to be relatively stable and overcomes serious performance problems that we found in Java 1.3.

WRT performance of Mozilla on VMS, the statistics that I reported earlier (e.g., taking more than 60 seconds to start on my OpenVMS Alpha V7.3 system) were based on starting Mozilla from the command line when nothing else was running on the machine.

On the broader question of supporting a browser and Acrobat Viewer on VMS, I think it would be a great help if VMS users all over the world could easily locate the latest and greatest download resources for Mozilla and XPDF, preferably from links prominently displayed on an HP OpenVMS web site. Maybe this exists already, but if so, I missed it. HP OpenVMS Engineering could do itself a favor by providing this.

For our part, I will be happy to have our web team put up links on our own web site if I can find out what the most appropriate links are. Here's what I know or believe so far...

MOZILLA
The web page at http://www.mozilla.org/releases/ provides links to Mozilla for OpenVMS Release Notes and download binaries. The link for Release Notes points back to HP, and the link for binaries points to a kit on the mozilla.org site that was "contributed by OpenVMS Engineering at HP". So the downloads are from two different companies/sites and there is the possibility that they may be or become out of sync. It would be nice if OpenVMS Engineering would provide a single site that always had both Release Notes and binaries. If there is such a site, and if anyone can quote the link, and if we can believe that it will remain constant, I will be happy to post it (at least for our users). At present, the Release Notes can be found at the somewhat lengthy and cryptic address http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/ips/mozilla_relnotes.html

XPDF
Based on the information contributed above, I assume that the site for XPDF is http://www.decus.de:8080/www/vms/sw/xpdf.htmlx, which points to a source download on http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf. Is this correct? Is this the best (or only) way to go about getting an Acrobat Viewer for VMS? If this works, perhaps we can build and post an executable for our users. If anyone knows of licensing constraints or restrictions that would make this unwise, please let me know.

Again, many thanks for the contributions to this discussion. I hope that OpenVMS Engineering is listening, but you never know...

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hello,

a point of clarification on XPDF. Foolabs is the original master source. There are at least two good reasons in my mind to have a link to their site:

1.) Intellectual honesty. After all Derek does 99.999% of the work. I just add small bits and pieces to smooth the build.

2.) I do not always manage to keep up with him, so you might find a newer version there than is on the DECUS server.

Having said that, currently I do recommend the version form www.decus.de (use the link with the 0s and 1s at the bottom of the page), since there is a problem in the code where it tries to use an Xt function at least not supported up to Motif 1.2.5

Greetings, Martin

P.S. In case I did not mention it before, if you build a version of Xpdf make sure to add T1lib and Freetype 2 support

[Willem Grooters]

If still applicable - but still.
I just read through all the remarks, and found John Deutch first remark (MAy 13th). I must agree. One of the recommendations in the Mozilla manual is to install at least part of Mozilla - though you will need quite a number of global sections. Also, setting WSMAX and PGFLQUO qiute high may help but surely, it is no good (up to now) in a many-user environment.
I aslo found Mozilla quite slow - even on a PWS500 with 256Mb memory, running 7.3-1. Part of it is it's BIG memory requirement. Moreover, quite a few problems arose with basic authentication - but this seemed to be a JAVA matter (I don't have the exact number) though it seems to be solved - I havn't tried yet.
My advice would be: use PDF files. Reason: it's static data (so why need a browser) , ikts faster and has a smaller footprint than Mozilla. And probably it's more stable.