Hans Vlems <hvlems at zonnet.nl> writes: That's the way I read it too and I happen to agree with that point of view :) Until you understand things like pasteboards and displays SMG$ is pretty awesome. Calling it from Pascal doesn't make it easier I can tell you. The pasteboard is the terminal screen. Not a difficult concept. You can, normally, only create one pasteboard per terminal. With the aid of a VMS pseudo-terminal, you can circumvent this restriction. Displays are "virtual terminals" of any size you declare them to be. You then position these on the pasteboard with SMG$PASTE_VIRTUAL_DISPLAY giving the coordinates of where you want the display pasted. Most other SMG$ APIs work upon the virtual display(s). As for DEC Pascal, I know not. Despite Mr. Reagan's affection for it and his claims that it's one of the better VMS compilers, I've never used it. For SMG$, all you really need is a way to pass by reference (pointer) and the ability to define string descriptors. I thought that Pascal created string descriptors by default for its character strings. I prefer to use Macro when I call SMG$. C can also be used but you need to roll your own descriptors. Fortran, as I recall, also had native descriptor creation in its compiler. -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.