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Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!decvax!harpo!seismo!rochester!rocksvax!dave
From: dave@rocksvax.UUCP (Dave Sewhuk)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng,net.nlang
Subject: Re: long names and hardware...
Message-ID: <1107@rocksvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Dec-83 16:04:56 EST
Article-I.D.: rocksvax.1107
Posted: Wed Dec  7 16:04:56 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Dec-83 07:55:53 EST
References: <6196@watmath.UUCP>, <507@dciem.UUCP>, <1490@utcsstat.UUCP> <410@pyuxa.UUCP>
Organization: Xerox, Rochester, N.Y.
Lines: 32

You think that today's ASCII terminals are OK for menus!!  You can have
at most 1920 characters of context on this menu in a single font.
Having used screen editors with real windows on bit mappped displays to
put together documents based from data in 3 files I would say that you
do not have enough context to help you.  Consider you need 2 lines of
that 24 line screen to lay down box edges to define the edges of the
file windows that leaves you with only 580 characters for equal
windows.   That is only 7 lines of text.  Also ASCII terminals have to
send keystrokes to down serially.  To scroll around you have to
use those blasted awful "arrow" keys, or commands to jump you from
window to window, no thanks.  I like having lots of context, it saves
me from making as many hardcopies, plus the ability to stuff text from
one window to another with the mouse.  It is nice to see that structure
in on that .h file in one window and the thing your working on in
another.  You tend to get things spelled correctly.

I think we need better hardware than plain ASCII terminals to do that
job.  Also consider that it is hell on the vt100 to send half of those
commands.  They involve sending some 5 bytes of data to do one little
operation.  That and no vt100 runs at 960 cps throughput.  They all run
throughputs on the order of 480 cps on plain text.  Those fancy scroll
functions take many milliseconds to run after you get those 5 bytes there.
It makes a busy screen take a long time
to get the cursor to move or scrolling seems sluggish.  When I see things
taking a long time I get restless, not a good mode to running in.


-- 
Dave

Arpa: Sewhuk.HENR@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
uucp: {allegra, rochester, ritcv, ritvp, amd70, sunybcs}!rocksvax!dave