Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!usc!ucsd!pacbell.com!ames!amelia!pioneer.arc.nasa.gov!samlb
From: samlb@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Sam Bassett RCS)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: termcap strangeness
Message-ID: <7175@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 6 Jul 90 05:41:54 GMT
References: <8567@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Sender: news@amelia.nas.nasa.gov
Reply-To: samlb@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov.UUCP (Sam Bassett RCS)
Distribution: na
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA.
Lines: 19


	Many terminals do funny things when the cursor goes into the 80th
column of the screen -- like issuing a CR/LF pair even when you don't
want one.  If this happens, suddenly you get double spacing in your text,
which really fouls up your editing.
	Also, when the cursor goes into column 80 of line 24, terminals
often either scroll automatically or put the cursor back to column 1 of
line 1 -- which also fouls up editing algorithms. 
	I suspect that, knowing these "features" of common terminals,
that the writers of the termcap/curses package punted and returned 79/23
whenever they saw 80/24 -- that way they could assure that the screen
would look reasonable under vi/emacs/whatever.  Any veteran wizards know
different?


Sam'l Bassett, Sterling Software @ NASA Ames Research Center, 
Moffett Field CA 94035 Work: (415) 604-4792;  Home: (415) 969-2644
samlb@well.sf.ca.us                     samlb@ames.arc.nasa.gov 
<Disclaimer> := 'Sterling doesn't _have_ opinions -- much less NASA!'