topic Re: eXcursion in Operating System - OpenVMS

eXcursion

Ben DeHaan — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 21:51:05 GMT

Hi All,

I currently use eXcursion at work and was interested in installing it on my home machine. When I searched the internet for this product I was I unable to find much information regarding it. Can someone please give me a link to where this product can be downloaded or purchased?

Much appreciated.

Ben

Re: eXcursion

Steven Schweda — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:33:35 GMT

I know nothing, but Google finds documents
which suggests that it's part of the
Pathworks product (which probably has a
non-zero price). It's been a while since I
cared, but I seem to recall seeing a few
different free (or nearly free) X servers for
Windows, for example:

http://x.cygwin.com/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming

http://www.microimages.com/downloads/mix/

My preferred solution is the old stand-by,
"Get a Mac."

Re: eXcursion

Hoff — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 10:10:01 GMT

There are various X Windows servers around for various client platforms.

eXcursion is part of the PATHWORKS32 client for Windows. PATHWORKS32 includes PowerTerm, LAT, DECnet and some other pieces.

Do ensure you have the proper version of PATHWORKS32 for whatever flavor of Windows you are running. PW32 V7.4 (probably with an ECO) is current? I haven't heard about a PW32 client for Vista as yet.

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/pathworks32/latestinfo.html

There are other X Windows clients for Windows.

As for other operating systems you might be using, Mac OS X ships with an X Windows server, and with ssh and other such. Here are some details of using that configuration with OpenVMS:

http://64.223.189.234/node/134

Most (all?) Linux distributions (Gentoo, Fedora 7, etc) include an X Server. The BSDs and (I think) Erlang, as well.

Re: eXcursion

John Travell — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 16:36:49 GMT

If your budget is zero, an option for you may be 'Xming', http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/ ,
I am using it between a PC running XP and VMS on V8.3, seems to offer good performance with no problems I have found so far. Possibly a bit clunky to setup security at the server (PC) end, I had to manually edit a file.
Apart from that, the price is right... :-)

JT:

Re: eXcursion

Gfuss — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:45:12 GMT

As already mentioned, eXcursion is on the Pathworks install CD. I think your best bet would be to contact HP if you cannot find your media.

I also know that Pathworks32 (v7.3) works fine with Vista. I have only installed the license (in Network Properties) and not the actual Patworks program as we only need to access shares on the VMS system and not necessarily run eXcursions.

Re: eXcursion

Rick Retterer — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:15:25 GMT

Ben,
I support the eXcursion product at the CSC and here is a little information that may help you.

*IF* you subscribe to the OpenVMS Operating System Update services, you will find a CD labled Pathworks 32 v7.4 included in your kit.

As Hoff pointed out, eXcursion is part of that CD kit.

eXcursion v7.4-189 has NOT been qualified to work with Windows Vista and I do not believe that there will be any later versions of eXcursion that will support the Vista OS.
We have not yet been advised on any intentions of eXcursion being updated, which makes some of the other PC Xservers mentioned more desireable.

This is not to say that eXcursion won't work on Vista, it's just that eXcursion v7.4-189 won't be officially supported.

We have seen the engineering efforts of the eXcursion product decline over the past few years and I'm very disappointed about it, I feel that eXcursion worked very well for what it was designed to do. While it was not the most robust PC Xserver available, it was fairly reliable.

Anyway, I'm rambling... I just wanted you to know where to find the software, and that your mileage may vary when using the current version with Vista.

Cheers,
Rick Retterer
HP Services
OpenVMS/Tru64 Unix/Linux Xwindows Support
Atlanta, GA.

Re: eXcursion

Andy Bustamante — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:15:36 GMT

As Hoff points out, most Linux/BSD releases include an X-Server by default. Linux and OpenVMS Interoperability by John Wisniewski http://www.amazon.com/OpenVMS-Interoperability-Tricks-Systems-Technologies/dp/1555582672/ref=sr_1_4/102-3148000-5551325?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1181585506&sr=1-4 has some good info on using Linux for X Windows sessions from a VMS system. I've used X-Windows over VPN without any issues and no noticeable latency.

Andy Bustamante

Re: eXcursion

RF Thomas — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 16:29:34 GMT

Just to provide an update on using excursion on newer versions of Windows:

Excursion only properly supports Display 1.

It can be setup without any formal installation and does not require any of the other components on the Pathworks CD.

It supports several different display types, far more than other X-windows servers.

Our software needs 8 plane static color, i.e. 256 entries in the color map. Such is not supported by most of the free X-servers.

Additionally, the Itanium servers rx2600, rx2660, rx2800-i2 do not support static color. Their graphics capabilities are very limited.

We have found that many of the X-severs do not proply position windows and sub-windows so that most of our application are unusable under these servers, addtionally they do not recognize many X11 commands causing many errro messages to be displayed.

Excursion runs with no issues on VISTA 32 and 64, Windows-7 32 and 64, Windows-8 32 and 64, Windows-8.1 32 and 64, Windows-10 32 and 64.

Can't find V7.4 of excursion. It probably never made it into the wild.

It is a relatively small package and runs efficiently. The major missing functionality is proper support for running a display other than display 1.