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From: greg@ncr-tp.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: dumber terminal device drivers
Message-ID: <171@ncr-tp.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Apr-85 21:54:35 EST
Article-I.D.: ncr-tp.171
Posted: Mon Apr 15 21:54:35 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Apr-85 04:40:35 EST
References: <327@piggy.UUCP> <2536@nsc.UUCP> <209@osiris.UUCP> <528@hou2d.UUCP> <191@dmsd.UUCP>
Reply-To: greg@ncr-tp.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Organization: NCR Corporation, Torrey Pines
Lines: 27

In article <191@dmsd.UUCP> bass@dmsd.UUCP (John Bass) writes:
>The best solution for multiuser systems is to EXPAND the keyboard input
>function to include a break bitmap and an echo bit map -- plus extend the
>terminal interface to include a 1D line editor with left-right margin control
>and max window size - this is a minor change to V7 tty routines and is

Humpf.....  For a change, I'm agreeing with John!  I don't think that
it is really an "expansion" of the functionality, though; this is the
kind of classic simplification and unification of concepts for which
Unix is justly famous.  It is, in fact, very close to the functionality
that I proposed for a smart terminal front end at one point.  Great
minds running in similar ways?

For another variant on the concept, one of the negiotiated options of
Telnet (one of the ARPAnet protocols) is RCTE, which I believe stands
for Remote Controlled Transmission and Echoing.  The idea was that a
user in, say, Hawaii could be connected to a computer on the mainland
and still have the advantage of a highly-interactive keyboard.  (If the
link is via satelite, the propagation delay is very noticable.)  There
were some race problems with the protocol, but the overall approach
was very similar -- download a table that specified break (transmit)
characters, echoed characters, and some info about whether to echo the
break character or not.  Is there somebody in ARPAland with access to
the RFC archives that could cite the applicable RFCs?  Jon Postel, are
you out there?
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Torrey Pines       Greg@ncr-tp.UUCP or Greg@nosc.ARPA