From: utzoo!watmath!watarts!music
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.works
Title: Re: useless but interesting idea
Article-I.D.: watarts.1624
Posted: Fri Jan 14 03:38:52 1983
Received: Sat Jan 15 00:15:03 1983
Reply-To: music@watarts (Davy Harrison)
References: cwruecmp.387

Awhile back when I was interacting with Unix through a VT-100, I
hacked the shell so that there were 2 user settable prompts:
The <before> prompt, which is printed before you enter a command,
and the <after> prompt, which is typed right after you hit return.
This permitted me to create many amazing effects.

My favourite prompt setting was
  <before> = "% <enter standout mode>"
  <after> = "<exit standout mode>"
This caused all the text that I typed to be highlighted, while all
the text the system typed wasn't.

Another was
  <before> = "<home cursor>% <clear to end of line>"
  <after> = "<go to beginning of 2nd line><clear to end of screen>"
This gave me a 'screen oriented' shell.  Most people thought it was
clever and novel when I showed it to them, but I found it annoying
to use while trying to do work.

I also instituted a flag to allow me to flip back and forth between
the user defined prompt settings and the standard prompts.  This
turned out to be useful while doing prompt research and experimentation,
so that I could quickly restore normality without losing my work.

I have never seen another shell incorporating a user settable
"after-prompt", so the idea may be original to me.  Perhaps the inherent
frivolity of such a concept accounts for this.
       -- Doug Moen, ...!watmath!watbun!kdmoen