[fa.info-vax] Broadcasting to PASSALL terminals

NEVILLE%umass-cs.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA (09/09/85)

While i do agree with the logic that  *only*  /nobroadcast  should turn
off reception of broadcast messages,  i don't think it is such a good idea
to modify the driver since i imagine that many existing programs that use
PASSALL mode and *do* want broadcast turned off count on /PASSALL to do that.

i think a better "fix" is to write a broadcast message handler - one of our
folks here did it a while back in FORTRAN and it has been used with our
Emacs.  The basic idea is to have the handler-setup routine set BRDCSTMBX
for the terminal, then define an AST routine to be invoked whenever the
new MBX is written.  If you are careful to use "descriptors" as per the
VAX-VMS calling standard, then you have a very usuable fix.

						Neville Newman

						neville@umass-cs   (CSnet)