The DEC Text Processing Utility (or DECTPU) is a dedicated programming language developed by

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...

(DEC) to easily create multi-functional

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...

s. TPU is part of

OpenVMS OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Ope ...

. It can be used on a terminal, a console, or on a graphical system like

DECwindows OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Ope ...

Functionality

TPU provides text buffer management APIs in concert with window management APIs which are targeted for the VT-XXX line of terminals. This allowed split-screen windows with scrolling and hence multiple views of the same buffer content. There are also key mapping APIs provided, allowing a wide range of functionality for editing text. The keyboard mapping could be easily adapted by the admin or the user. Users could write their own specific editor, to e.g. translate text or short (error) messages to multiple natural languages in a synchronised small text window. The text editor is callable, so you could have small text editors built into specific applications, e.g. a simple mail client. You might redirect output from applications into a text window, using

inter-process communication In computer science, inter-process communication or interprocess communication (IPC) refers specifically to the mechanisms an operating system provides to allow the processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categori ...

. Therefore one could call web services to return their results into a text buffer.

Implementations

EVE Eve (; ; ar, حَوَّاء, Ḥawwāʾ; el, Εὕα, Heúa; la, Eva, Heva; Syriac: romanized: ) is a figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. According to the origin story, "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the ...

(Extensible Versatile Editor), the first TPU-based editor, delivered with VAX/VMS by mid-1985. * In 1986, DEC developed a new version of EDT written in TPU *

Language-Sensitive Editor Language-Sensitive Editor (LSE) is a full-screen visual editor for the VAX/VMS and OpenVMS Operating systems. LSE is implemented by using the Text Processing Utility (TPU) language. It is part of the DECset programming tool set, which also contain ...

, part of VAXset (software development platform) * A version of the vi editor was created by Gregg Wonderly at

Oklahoma State University Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...

called TPUVI or VITPU. VITPU is still available via the

DECUS The Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society (DECUS) was an independent computer user group related to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of DECUS, Encompass, HP-I ...

archives online.

References

Text-oriented programming languages OpenVMS software {{Compu-lang-stub