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From: mic@ut-ngp.UUCP (Mic Kaczmarczik)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Amigaterm/MicroEMACS: Best of Both Worlds?
Message-ID: <3027@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Mar-86 09:51:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.3027
Posted: Thu Mar  6 09:51:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Mar-86 21:32:59 EST
References: <1423@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> <2881@amdahl.UUCP>
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 49


[burp]

Amigados and Intuition *already* provide a way to combine the ANSI
terminal emulation and Intuition menus and so on.  An example of this is
found in the PDTerm program posted to this group about a week ago.

How it works: when you open an Intuition window (using Intuition, not
AmigaDOS), you can also open the console.device to read and write from
that window. Voila!  You can do graphics, use menus, and send ANSI
escape sequences in the same window.

As far as AmigaDOS goes, you can tell the RAW: device to insert
menu and other events into the input stream just like a function key
or a regular key, so you can at least detect mouse moves and so on.
I'm not sure if you can get a handle on the window the RAW: device
is using, which means you may not be able to set the window title
or add menus to the window.  If anybody out there knows how to do it,
how about sharing the knowledge?

In fact, I've modified my copy of Amigaterm to use the console device,
and yup, the arrow keys send the right sequences, the ANSI terminal
emulation (kind of) works, and the only problem is that the console
device seems to be a bit slow when writing one character at a time to
the screen.

I think the reason you don't see this feature in programs like Amigaterm
and MicroEmacs is not because it's unavailable -- it's because people
need the time and documentation to integrate the feature into their
programs.  I've seen a (non-distributable) version of MicroEmacs that
uses menus for all the commands, opens up its own private screen, and
uses the mouse for setting the cursor and the mark.  Similarly, there is
no reason (beyond speed) that you can't add the console device to
Amigaterm.

As time passes, and more programmers get their hands on the
(much-improved!) 1.1 documentation, you'll see more software that
combine text and graphics in useful and exciting ways.  For the
meantime, it sure is convenient to be able to port utilities like
MicroEmacs in almost no time flat, so you can get some work done while
waiting for programs that use all of the Amiga's potential.

Cheers,

Mic Kaczmarczik					"Tensor", said the tonsor,
...!ut-sally!ut-ngp!mic				"Tonsor", said the tenser,
mic@a20.utexas.edu				"Tension, dissention and
						 apprehension have begun!"
						-- The Demolished Man