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Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!hsdndev!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <11556:Dec508:53:5890@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 5 Dec 90 08:53:58 GMT
References: <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <36488@cup.portal.com> <36537@cup.portal.com>
Organization: IR
Lines: 39

In article <36537@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
> 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".

I fail to see your logic. Why does the ability to easily standardize a
feature make for problems? TELNET was originally a MIL-STD protocol, and
it has lots of options. You can pretty much call up the IETF and ask for
another option number. The government uses TELNET all the time. What's
the problem?

> alternate char set:	not in 4.3BSD per the source code and per comments on
> 			page 139 of the O'Reilly "termcap and terminfo"

Perhaps Doug would know when and where as/ae were added.

  [ region scrolling is cs, line insert is AL, line delete is DL/dl ]

Sorry for my typos. In any case, the features are there, and they are
used. You stated that BSD doesn't support these features; you are wrong.

> Point being (again): the 4.3BSD curses is seriously deficient when contrasted
> to that available with SysV.

What serious deficiency are you talking about? It is impossible for a
program to use color or alternate character sets really well, since
different terminals have different colors and different alternate
characters. Other than that, everything you've claimed missing from BSD
is there.

> 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 ...." 

Okay, only a partial travesty of the truth.

---Dan