Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ubc-vision.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsri!ubc-vision!razzell From: razzell@ubc-vision.UUCP (Dan Razzell) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: DUMP is too verbose Message-ID: <138@ubc-vision.UUCP> Date: Wed, 7-May-86 15:16:30 EDT Article-I.D.: ubc-visi.138 Posted: Wed May 7 15:16:30 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 7-May-86 20:20:36 EDT Organization: UBC Computational Vision Lab, Vancouver, B.C., Canada Lines: 22 What is the purpose of DUMP periodically repeating its prompts to mount a new tape, ask for retry, etcetera? Seems redundant to me, and not in the spirit of Unix, to nag the user in this way and fill the terminal with verbiage. I've seen this technique elsewhere (eg. VMS BRU,) which might historically explain, but not excuse, its adoption in Unix. If calling attention is all that's needed, why not just beep the terminal? It might be necessary to put out a carriage return along with the beep to keep the terminal buffer from overfilling. On the same subject, DUMP's prompt lines are too long; couldn't they be trimmed to 80 (or even 72) characters to avoid ugly wrapping? The machine room environment is noisy enough without adding visual noise, n'est-ce pas? :-) -- ______________________________________________________ .^.^. Dan Razzell . o o . Laboratory for Computational Vision . >v< . University of British Columbia ______mm.mm___________________________________________