Talk:ORVYL and WYLBUR

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Stanford University, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Stanford University on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Stanford UniversityWikipedia:WikiProject Stanford UniversityTemplate:WikiProject Stanford UniversityStanford University articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Computing: Software

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Software.
	An editor has requested that an image or photograph be added to this article.

Caveat Lector

<Sigh>, we really need more concrete information here. From what I can see the timesharing system was actually ORVYL. WYLBUR was the editor for it. Don't rely on anything said in this article at the moment. It needs some TLC. -- Derek Ross | Talk 19:12, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

[vbh] Orvyl is a time sharing monitor that took advantage of the paging capability of the IBM 360/67 at Stanford's Campus Computing center. It was written by Roger Fajman with major improvements by Richard Carr, I believe over the summer in 1968. Wylbur is a text editor and time-sharing system. Wylbur was originally written by John Borgelt alongside Richard, again, I believe, in the summer of 1968. Milten monitored and supervised all the computer terminal input ports that allowed multiple users access to Wylbur and Orvyl. John Halperin wrote Milten. Joe Wells for Wylbur and John Halperin for Milten converted them to run under MVT on the 360/91 at SLAC and eventually OS/VS2 when SLAC obtained the two 360/168 computers. Joe made major improvements to Wylbur including the 'Exec' file capability that allowed one to script and run Wylbur Commands. He also built automatic file recovery for when the entire MVT/MVS system crashed which was not infrequent. This made Joe very popular with the SLAC physics community. John extended Milten to operate hundreds of terminals using an IBM3705 communications controller. These changes were eventually back-ported to the campus version of Wylbur when Orvyl was retired. Bruce Hunt [vbh] worked at SLAC as a System's programmer and eventually for Joe Wells. When Joe was promoted to a Director of the Stanford Center for Information Processing, I became the manager of the Wylbur Group, first at SLAC and then for both SLAC and campus. The team I managed continued to improve Wylbur up through 1976 principally making performance improvements that allowed Wylbur to run the number of users that Milten now could easily support.

I'm certain that Wylbur and Orvyl were written to run on and ran together on the campus 360/67. When I first worked as an intern at SLAC in 1968, the computer center had a 360/75 that was a stand-in for and replaced with the 360/91. I was a graduate student in computer science at Washington State University from 1970 through 1972 and brought up Wylbur and Milten there for use in the Computer Science Department. By the time I was hired by SLAC as a system programmer, Wylbur and Milten were running on the 360/91. [vbh]

As well as I know it, SLAC got WYLBUR from NIH, after they modified the version from Stanford campus. The 360/91 doesn't have DAT, so it can't run ORVYL. SLAC ran OS/VS2 (SVS) on the 370/168's for as long as I knew. By June 1976, SLAC and Stanford campus were running the same version of WYLBUR and ORVYL, but I don' t know how the transition was done. Among others, campus originally used ANNN (A is letter, N is digit) form for user names, while SLAC used UUU$GG where UUU is a three character user, and GG a two character group. (Some similarity to Unix user and group.) With the unification, campus changed also to UUU$GG, with a mapping from the ANNN form. Gah4 (talk) 05:29, 19 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While the original ORVYL ran only on the 360/67, a later version ran on the S/370; I don't know the details. MILTEN and Wylbur could run on both S/360 and S/370. 3270 support ran outside of MILTEN, and I don't know whether it was S/370 only. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:46, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

SLAC, as far as I ever knew, didn't have 3270s until VM/CMS in 1981 or 1982. That was the switch from the triplex on two 370/168s (running OS/VS2) and a 360/91 (running MVT) with ASP as the JES, to a 3081 running VM/CMS. Also, I don't believe SLAC ever ran MVS. Gah4 (talk) 21:03, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the timesharing system was ORVYL, not Wylbur. They ran on different computers at Stanford [vbh] No, they both ran on the 360/67 on Campus and Wylbur/Milten ran initially on a single 360 (either the 75 or 91) and then on the triplex( 360/91 and two 370/168 computers connected with channel to channel adapters.) at SLAC.[vbh]

Orvyl ran on the 360/67
Wylbur ran on the 360/75

I think it depends on the meaning of timesharing. WYLBUR time shares its editing duties, and EXEC files, but doesn't supply a programming environment like other systems do. EXEC files have 10 integer variables, 10 line number (five digit before and three after the decimal point) and ten character string variables. Mostly meant to help automate editing, and not general programming. But it does have to efficiently share its time between user editing tasks. Gah4 (talk) 21:03, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Commercial versions of Wylbur, e.g., SuperWylbur™, have more sophisticated macro capabilities. Still not a time sharing system, but more than SLAC Wylbur. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 22:26, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that ORVYL was used only at the university, not at SLAC, and that SLAC eventually ran a different version of Wylbur from that used at the university. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:53, 19 August 2010 (UTC) [vbh] See my notes above [vbh][reply]

WYLBUR originated at Stanford, went from there to NIH, and then back to SLAC. At that time, SLAC was running on the 360/91. SLAC got their 370/168's in 1973, but it wasn't until later, I believe 1976, that they got ORVYL, and started running the same versions of WYLBUR and ORVYL as the Stanford campus ran. [vbh] SLAC never ran Orvyl while I worked there. [vbh] You wouldn't run ORVYL without WYLBUR, as there is otherwise no way to edit files. The interaction between MILTEN, WYLBUR, and ORVYL is a little complicated. MILTEN recognizes its own commands, and processes them. Other commands are passed along. ORVYL, and programs running under ORVYL, can get commands not recognized by WYLBUR. Or, ORVYL can read directly from the terminal, and can also pass commands to WYLBUR to execute. Also, ORVYL can block some WYLBUR commands that affect the active file while ORVYL is using it. Gah4 (talk) 04:28, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

MILTEN/WYLBUR was used at the University of California Division of Library Automation for the early 1980's until about 2000. Orvyl was not used but WYLBUR and MILTEN were heavily modified at that organization. The UC online Public Access Catalog MELVYL ran as a subsystem of MILTEN. In addition a server Telnet module was added to MILTEN which talked to an implementation of the TCP/IP protocol suite so that MILTEN (and especially MELVYL) could accept connections across the Internet. A client Telnet module was also written as a MILTEN subsystem so outbound Telnet connections could be made. There were also a couple of other MILTEN subsystems written at UC. Extensive modifications were made to WYLBUR and especially MILTEN to support such things as automatic logon to MELVYL. Among the many modifications made to WYLBUR at UC was the ability to both send and receive Bitnet and SMTP email, as well as among internal users of WYLBUR. The version of MILTEN/WYLBUR originally run at UC was for the IBM OS/MVT real memory operating system but work was done to support IBM's MVS/XA and MVS/ESA virtual memory operating systems.

The term OS/VS2 encompasses both SVS and MVS. If the intent of your edit was that they initially supported SVS, then please change it to OS/VS2 R1 or to OS/VS2 (SVS). Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 22:07, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

The system consists of three parts:

WYLBUR -- Text editor /user interface

ORVYL -- Time-sharing monitor looks after file storage, virtual memory and resource scheduling

ORVYL commands are limited to eight characters

SHOW FILES LIKE suchnsuch

GET ????

PUT ????

SET ????

ORVYL User's Guide -- A guide to the ORVYL file system and command language.

MILTEN -- Terminal communications interface

The original computer system at SLAC worked with all of these components. Other systems may have replaced ORVYL and MILTEN with local equivalents.

SPIRES was separate but on the same system at Stanford. It was a database management system and an ORVYL program.

It does seem a little strange. While WYLBUR is the text editor that goes with ORVYL, WYLBUR was used much more than ORVYL, and I believe came first. WYLBUR was used for editing and submitting batch jobs even on systems that didn't do timesharing. (Especially on S/360 machine without DAT hardware.) Gah4 (talk) 18:59, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wylbur was also used for word processing. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:53, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Miscellaneous

MILTEN handled start/stop terminals
NIH Wylbur was a total rewrite
There were several commercial vendors of Wylbur
AFAIK those who implemented 3270 support did so outside of MILTEN
Wylbur was not designed as a time sharing system.
The article could use an explanation of associative ranges.
The article could use a family tree Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:20, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Prior to Wylbur there was Conversational Programming System (CPS) under OS/360 and RUSH, developed by Allen-Babcock. I believe that RAX was also in that time frame. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:53, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about CPS, prior to WYLBUR, SLAC ran CRBE. Gah4 (talk) 04:31, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Article updates : August 2010

I've started a round of updates to this article. Jeff Ogden (talk) 04:50, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some comments copied from other Talk pages:

Jeff, thanks for your work on Orvyl and Wylbur. I did my best but they are topics in need of some loving care and attention from someone knowledgeable. You have started to supply that. Thanks. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:36, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy to work on the ORVYL and WYLBUR article, but I'm not really all that knowledgeable about them and so it would be good to have others, hopefully more knowledgeable than I, review my changes. I suspect that it will take me two or three days to get my changes made. Jeff Ogden (talk) 04:42, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

References?

I have copies of the manuals for NIH Wylbur and SuperWylbur™; should I add them as footnotes, external references or neither? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:46, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are these paper copies or electronic? If they are free of copyright restrictions, you might think about making them available online in some fashion such as through Bitsavers.org

Alas, they're dead trees. I've contacted SuperWylbur Systems Incorporated and asked them to provide documentation to bitsavers and wikisources; there may be license issues on the latter. Does anyone have a contact at NIH? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:53, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In this article, the best bet might be to add a new history section with information on NIH Wylbur and SuperWylbur™ and then cite the two manuals as inline references to support the new information. I'll add some other history information about the various versions at some point, if someone doesn't beat me to it. But I don't have any information on SuperWylbur and not that much information on NIH Wylbur. Jeff Ogden (talk) 19:36, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. It would be great if these manuals could be scanned and uploaded to Bitsavers.org, or Archive.org or somewhere similar. When I was doing the original article on Dartmouth BASIC, I found these sites very helpful. Wikipedia has a repository called WikiSource which can also be used in principle. However it does tend to be sensitive about copyright issues, so you would have to be able to satisfy the Foundation that the copyright holder had given permission. -- Derek Ross | Talk 20:54, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proprietary versions?

Here is a copy of a note I entered on talk:Chatul:

Thanks for your corrections and additions to the ORVYL and WYLBUR article. I noticed you added "There are also proprietary versions." I saw something called WYLBUR, Inc., but that was from an article published in CACM back in 1973. A simple Google search didn't turn up anything that looked like proprietary versions. Do you know if proprietary versions are still available? Is their a URL or a citation we could use in the article? Jeff Ogden (talk) 19:18, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I just found http://www.superwylbur.com/. Not sure how I missed it the first time around. Any others? Jeff Ogden (talk) 19:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

[Copied from talk:Chatul] I believe that there were proprietary versions from all of

Online Business Systems (OBS)
Optimum Systems, Inc. (OSI)
- Purchsed by EDS
- Spun off as SuperWylbur Systems, Inc.
RAND

There was also something called INTERACT, which I believe was a rebranded Wylbur.

Was ACS a successor to OBS? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:53, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can provide you with the home page for SuperWylbur™ but I have no information about OBS. I've got a friend who can probably provide some history on the various versions, and I've got manuals for NIH Wylbur and SuperWylbur™. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:33, 16 August 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by W163 (talk • contribs) [reply]

Try contacting these for history of various versions:

Paul Anderson
John Borgelt
Roger Fajman
Gene Wathen
Richard Ziert
Clifford Lynch
Mark Needleman

The free versions that I know about are

NIH
SLAC
Stanford

The Proprietary versions that I know about are

INTERACT
OBS Wylbur
OSI (now SSI) SuperWylbur™
RAND Wylbur

I have copyrighted dead tree manuals only for NIH and SSI versions; I can provide citations with no legal issues but would need permission from the authors to provide copies.

I'll take a look at wikisources. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:13, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pages moved

The page "WYLBUR" has been moved to "ORVYL and WYLBUR".
The page Talk:WYLBUR has been moved to Talk:ORVYL and WYLBUR.

Jeff Ogden (talk) 01:21, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relation of Wylbur to host operating system

There are several misleading statements in comparisons between Wylbur facilities and facilities of the host OS. In particular:

While Wylbur originally had its own security facilities, it added support for RACF and equivalent software once they became available; the old Wylbur facilities were not as flexible or secure.
TSO supported editting variable blocked libraries, not just fixed blocked. Where Wylbur had an advantage was that it could compress out imbeded blanks, not just trailing blanks.
An unprivileged user could not change his ACF2 security restrictions.
An administrative user did not have to suspend security, at least not if he is using MVS security. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:57, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not knowledgeable enough about ORVYL/WYLBUR or MVS to be able to address the above comments. Can someone more knowledgeable than I take a crack at the necessary changes? Part of the problem may be that ORVYL/WYLBUR evolved over time as did MVS. The article is in a sense trying to talk about all of the versions without going into a huge amount of unnecessary detail. One way to deal with that might be to add a bit of information to several of the paragraphs in the Advantages/Disadvantages section that would say that "this or that shortcoming was addressed in later versions as follows ...". Jeff Ogden (talk) 00:42, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Its been a long time but if I recall the commands listed in the notes section under ORVYL were really WYLBUR commands - Mark Needleman (needleman_mark@yahoo.com)

WYLBUR, isn't an operating system, but what is it?

It is pretty clear that WYLBUR isn't an operating system since it requires ORVYL or OS/360 or one of its successors to run. But if it isn't an operating system, what is it? Calling it an editor seems to sell it short. It can probably be called a time-sharing system since it supported multiple users connected via terminals. The risk there is that to many people "time-sharing system" implies "operating system". Would the phrase "time-sharing sub-system" be better? Is there another more appropriate label to use?

And while ORVYL or OS/360 is the operating system under which WYLBUR ran, I think it is the case that many (most?) WYLBUR users thought of WYLBUR as the operating system they were using since it was the thing with which they had the most direct interaction. Not sure what the best way to deal with this in the article is, other than to just come out and say it. Suggestions? Jeff Ogden (talk) 20:46, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is what the article on TSO says:

In computing, the Time Sharing Option (TSO) is an interactive time-sharing environment for the lineage of IBM mainframe operating systems running from OS/MVT through MVS and OS/390 to the current z/OS.

So, would calling WYLBUR "an interactive time-sharing environment" be appropriate? Jeff Ogden (talk) 20:56, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I believe subsystem is the term usually used. WYLBUR uses the OS to do file I/O, and MILTEN to do terminal I/O. ORVYL does provide some features that other operating systems might also provide, but not those needed to run WYLBUR. (Systems without virtual storage can run WYLBUR for editing and job submission. WYLBUR EXEC files are a very limited form of time-sharing.) Gah4 (talk) 20:44, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on ORVYL and WYLBUR. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 18:23, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Enhanced versions

I've added a list of organizations that wrote enhanced versions of Wylbur, But I'm sure that it's not complete. Also, I don't have all of the manuals for NIH Wylbur. If anybody has manuals for any of the enhanced version, please include them in the references.

Also, I've started a section on editing. I don't have time to flesh it out, but I'm hoping that someone can do some wordsmithing on it. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:37, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good man! Thanks. -- Derek Ross | Talk 03:35, 21 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking of adding a section on SuperWylbur™, especially the macro facility, but I'm concerned that it might be TMI. Also, I'm hesitant to add a section on only one proprietary version, and don't have the documentation for OBS Wylbur. Any thoughts? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 00:22, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts? Just do it. There are only a few people who will be interested. But those few will be extremely interested and the information is not widely available. So I don't think that you need to worry about TMI. Plus it is a notable part of computing history that it is in danger of disappearing. -- Derek Ross | Talk 01:38, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Should we say the obvious

That they were named after the Wright Brothers? 199.168.151.173 (talk) 14:40, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And their father (Milton) and mother (Susan). No component that I know named after their sister, Katharine. Gah4 (talk) 07:38, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

PDS

WYLBUR provides compressed Partitioned Data Sets This is true, but sequential files are also compressed by default. SAVE to a PDS converts to the appropriate DCB parameters for that PDS. In WYLBUR days, I had the usual LIB, and also CARDLIB, an LRECL=80 PDS for data readable directly by batch jobs. For sequential files, the CARD option writes LRECL=80 data. I believe that a SAVE/REPLACE keeps the same DCB options. There is also PRINT for LRECL=133 data, and the LRECL option for any RECFM=FB value that you desire. Gah4 (talk) 00:57, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated the article to remove the PDS wording and also added a reference to line number support. Do you happen to know which Wylbur systems support the options

NIH
LIB (Librarian)
OBS
PAN (Panvalet)
SLAC

Do all of them support SEQUENCED IBM and SEQUENCED NUMBERED? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 01:31, 24 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I only ever used WYLBUR at SLAC. Until about 1976, they ran their modified version of WYLBUR from NIH. After that, they ran versions from Stanford campus, which included ORVYL. (Also, all manuals came from Stanford.) As I am sure that they would not lose features, somehow the different branches were combined at that point, and development continued, running the combined branch on both systems. I figured out all the different number save options while moving BASIC programs to/from ORVYL. Among others, you can specify the columns that the number goes into, with the default being 73/80. WYLBUR line numbers are eight digits, with three after the decimal point. The default puts four digits, a decimal point, and three after. This is also the default for submitting batch jobs with RUN. It works well with compilers that ignore 73/80, as you get line numbers on your listing. For programs that use all 80 columns, there is RUN UNNUMBERED. I don't know at all about commercial versions. Gah4 (talk) 03:31, 24 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

CRBE

As far as I know, CRBE was the predecessor to WYLBUR, and an IBM product. I just barely remember it from before WYLBUR. There is also CRJE, with a similar function. TSO was always considered an inefficient waste of computer resources, at least until big 370s. But yes, it could be used for editing, job submission, and reviewing job output before printing. Should CRBE be mentioned in this article? Gah4 (talk) 22:18, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, CRBE was the predecessor to CRJE in OS/360, but has no connection to Wylbur. Neither CRJE nor TSO EDIT had the editing functionality of Wylbur. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:46, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

https://forum.stanford.edu/wiki/index.php/Early_Computers_at_Stanford#IBM_System.2F360_model_91 has WYLBUR replace CRBE at SLAC. As well as I remember from so long ago, the WYLBUR EDIT command works like the CRBE EDIT command, though the MODIFY command is more useful. I suspect that the idea to create WYLBUR might have come from CRBE, though maybe no code. That is, that it could be done better, and it was the right time to do it Gah4 (talk) 23:30, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is a big difference between "CRBE was the predecessor to WYLBUR" and "replace CRBE at SLAC". SLAC dropped CRBE because Wylbur was better; that doesn't mean that they ere remotely similar. The edit command syntax was totally different. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:19, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That is why I asked here. What is CRBE edit syntax like? I might have only used it once before WYLBUR. The EDIT command for WYLBUR prints out the line to be edited, under each character, you can type (this is on a 2741, so type makes some sense) a new character that you want. Space preserves the existing character, and | replaces the character with space. I mostly used MODIFY, which is somewhat different. Gah4 (talk) 20:43, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Off the top of my head, CRJE commands were similar to TSO EDIT. It didn't have an ALTER or MODIFY command, only a simple change of one string to another, with an optional range of lines.

C /A/B/
C 'A' 'B'

Commands like LIST were also pretty basic; nothing like Wylbur's LIST letters digits in 'sections'. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:18, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Syntax highlighting

It is desirable to specify a language with the SyntaxHighlight tag, but only if the language specified is appropriate for the text that it delimits. Wylbur syntax has nothing to do with COBOL, and lang="cobolfree" is inappropriate. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:09, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Unless the language is specified, it is considered a error. You must specify the language supported by Pygments. -- Cedar101 (talk) 08:09, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

License

The original Wylbur was open source. The versions from ACS, OBS, OSI and SSI were proprietary. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:29, 17 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]