OpenVMS RTL Screen Management (SMG$) Manual

This document is the OpenVMS RTL Screen Management (SMG$) Manual, published in April 2001 by Compaq Computer Corporation. It provides detailed usage and reference information on screen management routines within the OpenVMS Run-Time Library (RTL).

The manual is structured into two main parts:

1. Tutorial Section: This section introduces the core components of the Screen Management Facility (SMG$), including pasteboards, virtual displays, viewports, and virtual keyboards. It covers various output operations (composition, writing to displays, changing renditions, drawing lines, displaying external text), input operations (reading from virtual keyboards, mouse/tablet data, setting/retrieving keyboard characteristics, line composition), advanced features (asynchronous events, subprocesses, cursor movement, exit handlers), and support for third-party terminals. It also includes guidelines for developing new programs using SMG$ routines and examples in multiple OpenVMS languages.
2. SMG$ Reference Section: This part offers detailed, alphabetical descriptions of each routine in the SMG$ facility of the Run-Time Library, including their format, arguments, return values, descriptions, and condition values.

The manual aims to help system and application programmers write programs that utilize SMG$ routines for terminal-independent screen I/O and complex screen image composition. It supersedes previous versions for OpenVMS Alpha and VAX 7.1.