Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nih-csl!lhc!mimsy!haven!adm!news
From: emsca!intevep!emsca!usb!poc@sun.com
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Duplicating ASCII bel in the tty driver
Message-ID: <25006@adm.brl.mil>
Date: 15 Nov 90 03:38:07 GMT
Sender: news@adm.brl.mil
Lines: 21

As the guy who originally posted this idea, I have some comments (sorry
if this has all been said before but I seem to have missed out on a lot
of intervening discussion).

1) Objections based on breaking network protocols are valid but
not insuperable. Decent self-respecting protocols (e.g. IP) can pass true 8-bit
data transparently, using character-stuffing if necessary. If UUCP can't,
that's a good reason not to use UUCP (though I'm using it now :-)

2) Objections based on breaking cursor-addressing programs like 'vi'
are both valid and serious. I can see no way round this short of putting
cursor-addressing knowledge in the kernel (yech!) or doing the
cursor-addressing through a special process. Window systems essentially
do this anyway, but I don't like having even more setuid processes around,
not to mention the overhead for every dumb terminal.

--
Patrick O'Callaghan			UUCP: sun!emsca!usb!poc@sun.com
Departamento de Computacion		Tel: +058 (2) 9073320, 9073322, 9073363
Universidad Simon Bolivar 		"The secret is to bang the rocks
Caracas, Venezuela 			 together, folks" - Douglas Adams