Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors 433

The complaints about ODS-RMS are red herrings. The real complaint here is that the tools on a particular OS weren't designed to do what was attempted. Fundamentally, the complaint is that since both OS's were DEC OS's, there should have been tools to allow them to better interoperate. That is, in this case VMS should have been coded to "handle my special bit arrangement" or preserve whatever file semantics existed from the other system (TOPS-10-20).

Now, the user "could" have encapsulated the file into some generic file format (say a generic raw 512 byte fixed block binary that contained information inside the file for it to be unpacked at it's destination) and then transfered the file. I do this all the time to transfer *RMS* files through non-VMS nodes because there is no standard way to preserve foreign file attributes across heterogenious node transfers.

It's not the OS, the file system, or the record management system that is or was at fault - it is that DEC management didn't place a premium on providing the tools on VMS for DECsystem interoperability - it is clear that the OS group itself wasn't interested in it - and was more focused on moving PDP11 users up to the VAX - and that it's design and features were oriented to that customer base - not to the large scale timesharing features of the DECsystems.