Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: .plan
Message-ID: <28110@news.Think.COM>
Date: 25 Aug 89 18:46:01 GMT
References: <61@towernet.UUCP> <1989Aug23.192105.21328@ee.rochester.edu> <10814@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1810@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Reply-To: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 23

In article <1810@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu> fuat@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu (Fuat C. Baran) writes:
>It's not really finger that needs to be fixed, but the terminal.

I think it's Unix that needs to be fixed.  Multics's (and some other
systems') solution to this problem is that the tty driver normally
translates most control characters to octal escapes or ^<char>
sequences.  Applications that need to send control sequences to the
terminal can put the terminal in raw output mode, but by default
terminals are not in raw output mode.

Programmable function keys are useful for some things, so telling the
users to turn off this feature when using Unix is the wrong answer.
With this "solution", every time a user goes into or out of an
application that makes use of function key programming he'd have to
change the set-up configuration.  For novice computer users, this
could be quite confusiong.


Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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