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From: dlm@piggy.UUCP (Daryl Monge)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: dumber terminal device drivers
Message-ID: <327@piggy.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 24-Mar-85 15:54:23 EST
Article-I.D.: piggy.327
Posted: Sun Mar 24 15:54:23 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 25-Mar-85 02:50:18 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 20

The individual who first had the idea of removing all the trash from TTY
device drivers wasn't "off the wall".  The overhead of user level code
doing much of the work may not be a valid argument.  I observe that
the following utilities and applications process character by character
anyway.
	EMACS
	VI
	ksh
	vnews
	all of our internal graphics applications.

With the growing list of user friendly applications and utilities, it seems
that fewer and fewer useful programs actually need the device drivers to do
more that read/write characters.  (Flow control may be needed there also).


Daryl Monge
AT&T Bell Labs  - Holmdel, NJ

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