COBOL editor for VMS with colors

[Notilus]

Can somebody help me find a colorful COBOL editor for Open VMS, or tell me if I can alter an existing LSE Editor that I use , so it will show the text with colors.
Thanks a lot

[Steven Schweda]

I know nothing, but have you looked at Vim?

[John Gillings]

Hmmm, COBOL in colour, hard to get my head around that. COBOL is just so monochrome. Almost like seeing Charlie Chaplin in colour.

That said, Notepad++ running on a PC has a mechanism for specifying how to colour source code, and includes a COBOL module.

[Craig A Berry]

I believe both NetBeans and Eclipse have COBOL plug-ins.

[Andy Bustamante]

Depending on the VMS version and platform you can use Pathworks or CIFS/Samba and present a share to an alternate workstation allowing you to use your favorite editor.

If the editor support opening a file via ftp that may be a possible option.

I favor Epsilon as my editor of choice, http://www.lugaru.com. There are add in modes available for languages, including DCL which work well. COBOL isn't included, but it wouldn't be difficult to update an existing mode. The right incentive would even make the project fun.

[Lucifer Megacruel]

Hi Notilus,
See: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Cobol_editing_with_Vim . As suggested by steve vim does include syntax highlighting for COBOL.

An easy way (not the most efficient, but should suffice for most purposes) to write a syntax highlighting component for windows is by sub classing the rich edit control. You can also make use of existing components like GtkSourceView and Scintilla as well. Another C++ based library is colorer. See :http://colorer.sourceforge.net/sshots/index.html

--Lucifer

[tsgdavid]

I had a related question in another thread for C language (see http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Languages-and-Scripting/Language-Sensitive-Editor-or-C-language-filter-recommendations/m-p/5275275#M12810)

I learned that notepad++, which is free open source, has a plugin that will use FTP to transfer files to/from a remote system.

Unfortunately, notepad++ generates an access violation after connecting to OpenVMS due to an unexpected syntax for directories. Since the source code is freely available, it would be conceivable to modify the code to support OpenVMS. I am playing with it, but I may not have the skills to succeed in this. The plugin is written in C++. I will post a note if this somehow happens.

Having said that, one could certainly use any tool that one wants, external to the editor to FTP files.

Dave

[Jur van der Burg]

You can install hgftp on the vms server, using an alternate ip port. Hgftp can supply the listings in a format that other applications may understand.

Jur.

[tsgdavid]

Jur >>You can install hgftp on the vms server, using an alternate ip port. Hgftp can supply the listings in a format that other applications may understand<<

HGFTP looks pretty interesting, but I gather that this server is only for VMS systems that do not have an FTP server or who would choose to use this instead of the one that they have?

Dave

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] but I gather [...]

Re-gather the part about "using an alternate
ip port".

[Hoff]

>HGFTP looks pretty interesting, but I gather that this server is only for VMS systems that do not have an FTP server or who would choose to use this instead of the one that they have?

HGFTP can be a better choice than the stock TCP/IP Services FTP client simply given that HGFTP is more compatible with and can more easily interoperate with one of the most common FTP clients in existence, where the stock FTP client doesn't. This is the Microsoft FTP client.

The stock FTP client is arguably technically correct in its interpretation of the FTP specifications, and the high-volume FTP client is arguably technically incorrect, but neither of the FTP providers involved here have budged from this deadlock in a decade or more.

And yes, if you don't want to simply disable the stock client, you can run HGFTP on an alternate port.

Or get sftp going, and stop sending cleartext passwords around your network.

[Notilus]

Thanks for all the replies,

Both Eclipse & Vim are open source project, and I am looking for a IT company that sells products for Open VMS, and can implement the editor in my organization , and support it afterwards.

I have already posted a question to Laguru company about their Epsilon editor to get some more details about working with Epsilon on VMS.

[Hoff · Accepted solution]

>Both Eclipse & Vim are open source project, and I am looking for a IT company that sells products for Open VMS, and can implement the editor in my organization , and support it afterwards.

eCube Systems offers a commercial IDE for VMS.