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From: thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <36537@cup.portal.com>
Date: 4 Dec 90 12:22:45 GMT
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In <24221:Dec400:05:0790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan
Bernstein) writes some comments which I'll address in a moment.  But first I
assert this is neither the TIME (too late) nor the PLACE (wrong newsgroup) for
OS wars (and how DID this thread get cross-posted to alt.religion.computers?)
so I'll be brief and hopefully succinct, and try to keep this interesting.

First a background summary to put the remainder of this post into perspective:

In October I discovered a severe deficiency with BSD curses compared to SysV's
curses, and I instigated much discussion in comp.sys.att, unix-pc.general,
comp.unix.questions, comp.unix.programmer, and comp.unix.aux in this regards.

I followed up ALL the leads, read ALL the docs, and discovered a lot.  Among
the material I studied are included the sources of the latest 4.3BSD "Tahoe"
curses library, 4.3BSD termcap, the pertinent SVR3 books (SVR3.2 Programmer's
Reference Manual and SVR3.2 Programmer's Guide, Vol. II), the O'Reilly books
("termcap & terminfo" (Sept.1990 edition) and "Programming with curses"), and
a large number of other curses-related documents, and even email with Berny
Goodheart (root@tndsyd.oz.au (0000-Berny Goodheart(0000))) who's the author of
the JUST-published "UNIX CURSES EXPLAINED", Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0 13 931957 3.

I've checked the AT&T Toolchest, and was finally referred to Vaughn Vernon of
Aspen Scientific for a source license to their SVR3.2-compatible "curses" due
to the deficiencies of BSD curses.  I even keep the BSD curses' source online
so I can check and verify comments I make in these regards:

	CLI6> ls -l sys6b:*bsd4.3*
	----ar-e- 90-10-08 04:08:30   90    45303 libcurses-bsd4.3.tar.Z
	----ar-e- 90-10-08 04:11:49  223   112593 window-bsd4.3.tar.Z
	Dirs:0    Files:2    Blocks:313   Bytes:157896  

Now for Dan's response to my post:

>In article <36488@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
>> Bushwa!  As just ONE example of BSD's obsoletedness that recently caused me
>> MUCH grief, let's look at BSD curses vs. *ANY* SysV curses since SVR3.
>> Where's the BSD terminfo support, alternate character set, region scrolling,
>> line insert/delete, color support,  etc etc etc?
>
>Terminfo support? Where's System V's termcap support? Not an issue.
>
>BSD alternate character set: as, ae. Region scrolling: cr. Line insert:
>il. Line delete: dl. There's no color support, but there also aren't two
>color terminals in a thousand. And you can pretty much standardize the
>name for a new feature by calling up Berkeley and asking for it.
>
>> Kent, it appears to me you haven't studied any recent SysV system,
>
>I don't see any errors or implied errors in what Kent wrote. I see a
>nearly complete travesty of the truth in your only example of supposed
>BSD failings.

At first I was going to dismiss Dan's comments as just some more BSD-babble
parroting the BSD party line opinions and conveniently omitting any fact, BUT
I've seen this same kind of BSD-response sooo often I've been wondering "Why?"
for over 4 years.

To date, I have never seen any compelling facts that support the contention
"BSD is better than SysV".  (Bear with me, see below)

And please limit any comments to the kernel, system libraries, and "devices";
EVERYTHING else is just a program(s) which can be ported to any system of
one's choosing as I did to put the BSD networking software on most my SysV
systems because I was unhappy with the stock WIN 3B/TCP stuff.

Regarding termcap, ALL the SysV-like ports to which I have access support BOTH
termcap and terminfo (and the corresponding libraries) for "compatibility"
reasons (this includes stuff from AT&T, HP, and others).

I stated the SysV 14-char filename limit has been a hassle, but SVR4 solves
that problem.  Networking, sockets, BSD FFS, etc all exist in SVR4.  What's
left that I'm not seeing?  Dunno (at least from the application level).

Dan's comment: "And you can pretty much standardize the name for a new feature
by calling up Berkeley and asking for it."  SHEESH!  That's just the nature of
the PROBLEM with which I opened my original post!  Government and business
clients will NOT tolerate eleventy-seven different "versions".  AT&T's high
license fees are designed to prevent "random", non-standard hacks which create
a plethora of "proprietary" features at (only) some sites; the goal is to
have, from a business point of view, a stable platform upon which one can run
the $$$ software one buys, and ONLY with that stability will UNIX become more
accepted and widespread.

Dan's OWN examples belie his arguments, and illustrates the PROBLEM with BSD
(the random user hacks not generally found with SysV).  To wit:

He states: "BSD alternate character set: as, ae. Region scrolling: cr. Line
insert: >il. Line delete: dl."

Maybe on *HIS* "BSD" system, but not on mine.  For example: right out of the
4.3BSD curses' source code, in tty_cr.c, we find the pattern strings:

	namp = "ambsdadbeohchzinmimsncnsosulxbxnxtxsxx";
	namp = "albcbtcdceclcmcrcsdcdldmdoedeik0k1k2k3k4k5k6k7k8k9hoicimip\
kdkekhklkrkskullmandnlpcrcscsesfsosrtatetiucueupusvbvsveALDLUPDOLERI";

and from 4.3BSD's curses.h we find (supporting the above):

extern bool     AM, BS, CA, DA, DB, EO, HC, HZ, IN, MI, MS, NC, NS, OS, UL,
		XB, XN, XT, XS, XX;
extern char	*AL, *BC, *BT, *CD, *CE, *CL, *CM, *CR, *CS, *DC, *DL,
		*DM, *DO, *ED, *EI, *K0, *K1, *K2, *K3, *K4, *K5, *K6,
		*K7, *K8, *K9, *HO, *IC, *IM, *IP, *KD, *KE, *KH, *KL,
		*KR, *KS, *KU, *LL, *MA, *ND, *NL, *RC, *SC, *SE, *SF,
		*SO, *SR, *TA, *TE, *TI, *UC, *UE, *UP, *US, *VB, *VS,
		*VE, *AL_PARM, *DL_PARM, *UP_PARM, *DOWN_PARM,
		*LEFT_PARM, *RIGHT_PARM;

And in the 4.3BSD docs we find:

alternate char set:	not in 4.3BSD per the source code and per comments on
			page 139 of the O'Reilly "termcap and terminfo"
region scrolling:	"cs" to set the region line range, and "sf", "sr", "SF"
			and "SR" to manipulate the region
line insert:		"AL"		(not Dan's "il" (not in the source))
line delete:		"DL" and "dl"	(which differ; not just Dan's "dl")
color:			not in 4.3BSD

Point being (again): the 4.3BSD curses is seriously deficient when contrasted
to that available with SysV.  Even AT&T conceded the realities of the "real
world" by supporting DEC's "vt100" mode and alternate character sets for SVR3
curses; due to sheer numbers of vt100-like terminals out there it's become a
de facto standard and cannot be ignored.

As for "There's no color support, but there also aren't two color terminals in
a thousand.", that's a suprising comment to make in a newsgroup where one can
read about many Amiga-hosted terminal emulators.  :-)

In "my" world, clients do NOT have X-terminals but they will have monochrome
and color VT100-like, VT240, and other ASCII-graphic devices for which a
SVR3.2 curses is perfectly suited.  These clients are the BigGuys who process
your checks, medical records, tax returns, military procurement, and &tc.
They're switching to UNIX for its networking, interconnectivity and other neat
features including stability and freedom from proprietary operating system
"gotchas" as new hardware is necessarily acquired.

I would NEVER denigrate the fine, taxpayer-supported R&D work done at UCB and
at many other places.  The BSD networking HAS become the standard.  But those
are application-level enhancements for the most part, and even AT&T had to
concede some of the neat goodies of BSD by putting them in SVR4, making them
part of the new standard.  Those concessions DIDN'T imply that SysV was a
deficient unusable OS, and many of the BSD-isms and SysV-isms can co-exist on
the same system.  I prefer ready availability of sources, but I also have to
look beyond the Ivory Tower to the Real World because that's where my clients
and I operate.

I'm getting long-winded again, but I'm hoping some of these discussions are
proving useful/interesting.  At this point in time, with SVR4 "here", any
continued discussions of BSD vs. SysV are moot and should be dropped, but I
felt a documented response was necessary due to Dan's claiming my comments
were a "... complete travesty of the truth ...." 

You be the judge.  :-)

Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]