Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!sco!seanf
From: seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: ReadKey like Function in C
Message-ID: <3205@scolex.sco.COM>
Date: 21 Aug 89 01:19:40 GMT
References: <148@trigon.UUCP> <225800206@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <3180@scolex.sco.COM> <3802@buengc.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Lines: 31

In article <3802@buengc.BU.EDU> bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>In article <3180@scolex.sco.COM> sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes:
>>The *only* place I've seen a need for something like that is in
>>games, which, I regret to inform you, are not the staple of most
>>programmers.

As I've pointed out before, I worked for about two years on a system that
didn't have single-character I/O, yet had a very nice full-screen editor
(specifically, FSE under NOS running on a CDC Cyber 170/760).

Doug Gwynn uses, I believe, an editor which doesn't use scio either (sam
running on a DMD 630).

Maybe I should have been a bit clearer:  I have not really seen a need for a
portable way to do this, except for games and the like.  Most other programs
will *not* be portable to all systems supporting C (MicroEmacs, and editor
which is fairly portable, does it by being #ifdef'd and relying on unix
compatable libraries), so having a "portable" scio routine such as ReadKey()
is not really helping things.

Both proponents and conponents (is that a real word?  it should be...) will
be able to drag up examples to support their cause.  For my side, I'd only
suggest programming for a while on a Cyber (or, if you can't do that, on an
IBM system with virtual card-punches); you will, eventually, learn that scio
is *not* necessary for most things, and the lack is only a bit inconvenient 
at time.

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  |    "[Space] is not for the timid."
seanf@sco.UUCP   |             -- Q (John deLancie), "Star Trek: TNG"
(408) 458-1422   | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'.