Charles Bailey bailey at genetics.upenn.edu
says:
>In article <koraimann.121.0010D98B at bkfug.kfunigraz.ac.at>, koraimann at bkfug.kfunigraz.ac.at (Dr. G. Koraimann) writes:
>> We are currently using GCG 8 running on a Alpha AXP Server. Since this server
>> also fullfills other purposes we want to transfer the program onto a machine
>> that is devoted to GCG and sequence analysis programs only. Therefore, once
>> again, the question concerning the platform on which GCG programs run best
>> arises. Does anyone out ther have any ideas or suggestions whether VMS or UNIX
>> is a better choice for GCG ?
>>I think the comfort of your users and the nature of your other sequence
>analysis software are more important factors here than the differences in the
>way GCG operates under various OSs. I use GCG under VMS and under Solaris, and
>the functionality available in each place is more or less equal. IMHO, the
>feel of GCG is closer to VMS conventions, so one might argue that the overall
>environment is more consistent under VMS wrt command syntax, logical names,
>etc., but this is more a point of style than of capability.
>>Regards,
>Charles Bailey bailey at genetics.upenn.edu
I must concur that VMS is a much nicer user environment. GCG was written
under and for VMS, using VMS conventions. (We've recently gone UNIX to go
to faster server using UNIX because of other stuff we might want to run on
this server.) To make some features of GCG work as well under UNIX, they
have had to write their own logical name and symbol service. This is almost
as good as VMS, but GCG programs (to, name) must be invoked to use them.
Although GCG liked to mix cases in their commands, and such still appears
in the documentation(e.g.SeqEd), UNIX's case sensitivity seems to have forced
this warning in the User's Guide (p 3-5): "Wisconsin Package program commands
are case sensitive. Therefore, you must type all program names in lowercase."
Also note that there is no abbreviating commands.
Unix appeared early in the 70's and, I believe, achieved its ascendency only
because AT&T was giving it away. [There's a moral here, I think] It may have
looked reasonable next to such operating systems as RSX, but appears to be the
work of a misanthropic computer geek.
