Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utcs.toronto.edu!cks
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu (Chris Siebenmann)
Subject: Re: POSIX bashing
Message-ID: <1991Apr19.170447.8051@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: Ziebmef home away from home
References: <3446@unisoft.UUCP> <3478@unisoft.UUCP> <1991Apr14.094953.12840@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu> <129131@uunet.UU.NET>
Date: 19 Apr 91 21:04:47 GMT
Lines: 20

rbj@uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim) writes:
| I think the real challenge is to put readline and termcap into the kernel.
| By now, everyone's terminal should be ANSI and require no padding, so
| simple line editing should be reasonable to do. 

 "Should" is, I think the right word here. "Is" is definetly the wrong
one; a significant chunk of local terminals are not ANSI, and many
terminals can't manage to always keep up at 9600 baud. Of the terminals
and terminal types I use regularly, only one is ANSI-ish -- and that's
the xterm. Indeed, my favorite "terminal type" has neither terminal
emulation nor need of readline et al in applications that run under
it, since it's an X11 clone of the Blit/DMD5620/AT&T630 mux text
window that Doug Gwyn has already described; it happily lets me edit
text all over the place before sending the resulting lines to Unix.
Not to mention our hardcopy console terminals.

--
	"This will be dynamically handled, possibly correctly, in 4.1."
		- Dan Davison on streams configuration in SunOS 4.0
cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu	           ...!{utgpu,utzoo,watmath}!utgpu!cks