# Vim documentation: os_390

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    *os_390.txt*    For Vim version 7.0f.  Last change: 2005 Mar 29

    		  VIM REFERENCE MANUAL	  by Ralf Schandl

    					*zOS* *z/OS* *OS390* *os390* *MVS*
    This file contains the particulars for the z/OS UNIX version of Vim.

    1. Open source on z/OS UNIX		|zOS-open-source|
    2. Your feedback is needed		|zOS-feedback|
    3. Building VIM for z/OS UNIX		|zOS-building|
    4. ASCII/EBCDIC dependent scripts	|zOS-has-ebcdic|
    5. XTerm Problems			|zOS-xterm|
    6. Motif Problems			|zOS-Motif|
    7. Bugs					|zOS-Bugs|
    8. Known weaknesses			|zOS-weaknesses|
    9. Changes				|zOS-changes|

    DISCLAIMER:
    We are IBM employees, but IBM is not responsible for this port.  This is our
    private fun, and is provided in the hopes that it may be useful to others.

    Please note that this software has NOT been submitted to any formal IBM
    testing and is published AS IS.  Please do not contact IBM for support for this
    software, as it is not an official component of any IBM product.  IT IS NOT
    SUPPORTED, GUARANTEED, OR RELATED WHATSOEVER TO IBM.

    Contributors:
    The port to z/OS UNIX was done by Ralf Schandl for the Redbook mentioned
    below.

    Changes, bug-reports, or both by:

    	David Moore
    	Anthony Giorgio <agiorgio@fastmail.fm>
    	and others

    This document was written by Ralf Schandl and revised by Anthony Giorgio.

    ==============================================================================

    1. Open source on z/OS UNIX		*OS390-open-source* *zOS-open-source*

    If you are interested in other Open Source Software on z/OS UNIX, have a
    look at the following Redbook:

        Mike MacIsaac et al
        "Open Source Software for z/OS and OS/390 UNIX"
        IBM Form Number: SG24-5944-01
        ISBN: 0738424633

    You can find out more information, order a hard copy, or download a PDF
    version of these Redbooks at:

    	http://www.redbooks.ibm.com

    ==============================================================================

    2. Your feedback is needed		*OS390-feedback* *zOS-feedback*

    Vim should compile, link, and run right out of the box on a standard IBM z/OS
    UNIX mainframe.  I've personally run it on z/OS V1R2 and V1R3 machines without
    problems.

    Many changes had to be done to the code to port Vim to z/OS UNIX.  As like
    most UNIX programs, Vim contained heavy ASCII dependencies.  I might have
    missed an ASCII dependency, or it is possible that a new one has been added
    with a feature or bug fix.  Most programmers are simply not aware of possible
    ASCII/EBCDIC conversion issues.  If you hit a problem that seems related to
    this, feel free to contact us at the email addresses above.

    One indication of ASCII/EBCDIC conversion problems is screen corruption with
    "unprintable" characters.  For example, at one point the errorbell was broken
    in Vim.  Any time Vim tried to ring the terminal bell an ASCII character 0x07
    would be printed.  This works fine on most terminals, but is broken on an
    EBCDIC one.  The correct solution was to define a different value for the bell
    character on EBCDIC systems.

    Remember, it's only possible to fix a bug if the community knows about it.
    Don't rely on someone else to report it!  See the section |bug-reports|.

    ==============================================================================

    3. Building VIM for z/OS UNIX		*OS390-building* *zOS-building*

    A word on debugging code first:

    The normal run of configure adds the flag '-g' to the compiler options,
    to include debugging information into the executable.  This information
    are normally removed from the executable with the strip command during
    installation.  On z/OS UNIX, it is not possible to remove this from
    the executable.  The strip command exists on z/OS UNIX and is called
    during the installation, but it does nothing.  It is equivalent to the
    'touch' command.  This is due to the way debug symbols are stored in the
    objects generated by the compiler.

    If you want to build Vim without debugging code, export the environment
    variable CFLAGS set to an empty string before you call the configure script.

    	export CFLAGS=""

    Building without X11:

    Note: Use cc to build Vim.  The c89 compiler has stricter syntax checking
    and will not compile Vim cleanly.

    If you build VIM without X11 support, compiling and building is
    straightforward.  Don't forget to export _CC_CCMODE=1 before calling
    configure and make.

        $ export _CC_CCMODE=1
        $./configure --with-features=big --without-x --enable-gui=no
        $ make
        $ make test

    	Test notes:
    	Test 11 will fail if you do not have gzip installed.
    	Test 42 will fail, as VIM on z/OS UNIX doesn't support the multibyte
    	feature.  (David Moore: "Doesn't work _yet_!  :-)  I'll see what I
    	can do.")

        $ make install

    Building with X11:

    There are two ways for building Vim with X11 support.  You can link it
    statically with the X11 libraries or can bind it with the X11 DLLs.  The
    statically linked version results in a huge executable (~13MB), while the
    dynamically linked executable is much smaller (~4.5MB).

    Here is what you do, if you want Motif:

      a) Static link
    	$ configure --with-features=big --enable-gui=motif
    	$ make

         VIM is now linked statically with the X11 libraries.

      b) Dynamic link:
         Make VIM as described for the static link.  Then change the contents of
         the 'auto/link.sed' file by appending:
    	s%-lXm  *%/usr/lib/Xm.x %g
    	s%-lX11  *%/usr/lib/X11.x %g
    	s%-lSM  *%/usr/lib/SM.x %g
    	s%-lICE  *%/usr/lib/ICE.x %g

         Then do:
    	$ rm vim
    	$ make

         Now Vim is linked with the X11-DLLs.

    See the Makefile and the file link.sh on how link.sed is used.

    ==============================================================================

    4. ASCII/EBCDIC dependent scripts	*OS390-has-ebcdic* *zOS-has-ebcdic*

    For the internal script language the feature "ebcdic" was added.  With this
    you can fix ASCII dependent scripts like this:

        if has("ebcdic")
    	let space = 64
        else
    	let space = 32
        endif

    ==============================================================================

    5. XTerm problems			*OS390-xterm* *zOS-xterm*

    Note: This problem was resolved in version 6.1b.

    I saw one problem with XTerm on z/OS UNIX.  The terminal code for moving the
    cursor to the left is wrong in the termlib database.  Perhaps not wrong, but
    it didn't work with VIM syntax highlighting and command line cursor movement.

    If the highlighting is messed up while you type, but is okay after you refreshed
    the screen with <C-L> or if you can't move to the left with the cursor key on
    the command line, try adding
    	:set t_le=^H

    to your .vimrc.  Note: '^H' is one character, hit <C-V><C-H> to get it.

    ==============================================================================

    6. Motif Problems			*OS390-Motif* *zOS-Motif*

    It seems that in porting the Motif library to z/OS, a translation from EBCDIC
    to ASCII for the accelerator characters of the pull-down menus was forgotten.
    Even after I tried to hand convert the menus, the accelerator keys continued
    to only work for the opening of menus (like <Alt-F> to open the file menu).
    They still do not work for the menu items themselves (like <Alt-F>O to open
    the file browser).

    There is no solution for this as of yet.

    ==============================================================================

    7. Bugs					*OS390-bugs* *zOS-Bugs*

    - Vim will consistently hang when a large amount of text is selected in
      visual block mode.  This may be due to a memory corruption issue.  Note that
      this occurs in both the terminal and gui versions.

    ==============================================================================

    8. Known weaknesses			*OS390-weaknesses* *zOS-weaknesses*

    - No binary search in tag files.
      The program /bin/sort sorts by ASCII value by default.  This program is
      normally used by ctags to sort the tags.  There might be a version of
      ctags out there, that does it right, but we can't be sure.  So this seems to
      be a permanent restriction.

    - Multibyte support (utf-8) doesn't work, it's disabled at compile time.
      (|multibyte|)

    - The cscope interface (|cscope|) doesn't work for the version of cscope
      that we use on our mainframe.  We have a copy of version 15.0b12, and it
      causes Vim to hang when using the "cscope add" command.  I'm guessing that
      the binary format of the cscope database isn't quite what Vim is expecting.
      I've tried to port the current version of cscope (15.3) to z/OS, without
      much success.  If anyone is interested in trying, drop me a line if you
      make any progress.

    - No glib/gtk support.  I have not been able to successfully compile glib on
      z/OS UNIX.  This means you'll have to live without the pretty gtk toolbar.

    Never tested:
        - Perl interface		(|perl|)
        - Hangul input		(|hangul|)
        - Encryption support	(|encryption|)
        - Langmap			(|'langmap'|)
        - Python support		(|Python|)
        - Right-to-left mode	(|'rightleft'|)
        - SNiFF+ interface		(|sniff|)
        - TCL interface		(|tcl|)
        ...

    If you try any of these features and they work, drop us a note!

    ==============================================================================

    9. Changes				*OS390-changes*	*zOS-changes*

    This is a small reference of the changes made to the z/OS port of Vim.  It is
    not an exhaustive summary of all the modifications made to the code base.

    6.1b (beta):
      Changed KS_LE in term.c to be "\b" instead of "\010"  This fixed the
      screen corruption problems in gVim reported by Anthony Giorgio.

      Anthony Giorgio updated this document:
    	- Changed OS/390 to z/OS where appropriate.  IBM decided to rename
    		all of its servers and operating systems.  z/OS and OS/390
    		are the same product, but the version numbering system was
    		reset for the name change (e.g. OS/390 V2R11 == z/OS V1R1).
    	- Added information about second edition of the Open Source Redbook.
    	- Moved Redbook information to a separate section.
    	- Various tweaks and changes.
    	- Updated testing section.

    6.0au:
      Changed configure.in
      Changed documentation.
      Anthony Giorgio fixed the errorbell.

      David Moore found some problems, which were fixed by Bram and/or David for
      6.0au.

    6.0q (alpha):
      Minor changes for nrformats=alpha (see |'nrformats'|).
      Problem with hard-coded keycode for the English pound sign.  Added a define in
      ascii.h
      Disabled multibyte for EBCDIC in feature.h

    6.0f (alpha):
      First compile of Vim 6 on z/OS UNIX.  Some minor changes were needed.

      Finally found the reason why make from the top level didn't work (I must have
      been blind before!).  The Makefile contained a list of targets in one target
      line.  On all other UNIX's the macro $@ evaluates to the first target in this
      list, only on z/OS UNIX it evaluates to the last one :-(.

    5.6-390d:
      Cleaned up some hacks.

    5.6-390c:
      I grepped through the source and examined every spot with a character
      involved in a operation (+-).  I hope I now found all EBCDIC/ASCII
      stuff, but ....

      Fixed:
        - fixed warning message in do_fixdel()
        - fixed translation from Ctrl-Char to symbolic name (like ^h to CTRL-H)
    	    for :help
        - fixed yank/delete/... into register
        - fixed :register command
        - fixed viminfo register storing
        - fixed quick-access table in findoptions()
        - fixed 'g^H' select mode
        - fixed tgetstr() 'get terminal capability string', ESC and
    	    Ctrl chars where wrong.  (Not used on OS/390 UNIX)

      ctags:
        - added trigraphs support (used in prolog of system header files)
    	    (get.c)
        - fixed sorting order with LC_COLLATE=S390 to force EBCDIC sorting.
    	    (sort.c)

    5.6-390b:
      Changed:
        - configure.in:
    	- added test for OS/390 UNIX
    	- added special compiler and linker options if building with X11
        - configure:
    	- after created via autoconf hand-edited it to make the test for
    	  ICEConnectionNumber work.  This is a autoconf problem.  OS/390 UNIX
    	  needs -lX11 for this.
        - Makefile
    	- Don't include the lib directories ('-L...') into the variable
    	  ALL_LIBS.  Use own variable ALL_LIB_DIRS instead.  A fully POSIX
    	  compliant compiler must not accept objects/libraries and options
    	  mixed.  Now we can call the linker like this:

    	    $(CC) $(LDFLAGS) $(ALL_LIB_DIRS) $(OBJ) $(ALL_LIBS)

      Fixed:
        - Double quote couldn't be entered
          Missed ASCII dependencies while setting up terminal
          In ASCII 127 is the delete char, in EBCDIC codepage 1047 the value 127
          is the double quote.
        - fixed ':fixdel'

    5.6-390a:
      first alpha release for OS/390 UNIX.

      Addition:
        - For the internal script language I added the feature "ebcdic".
          This can be queried with the has()-function of the internal
          script language.

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