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From: djs@cblpe.ATT.COM (Doug Scofea)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.emacs
Subject: Streams, pseudo-tty's for UTS 5.2.5
Message-ID: <462@cblpe.ATT.COM>
Date: Wed, 3-Jun-87 21:54:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: cblpe.462
Posted: Wed Jun  3 21:54:38 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 10:54:21 EDT
Reply-To: djs@cblpe.ATT.COM (55217-Doug Scofea)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Columbus, Ohio
Lines: 31
Keywords: streams UTS emacs
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:2804 comp.emacs:1179

Hi netlanders.  I've been using GNU emacs 18.41.  It has a very nice mode
called shell.  In this mode, emacs starts a shell as a subprocess.  Input
to the shell (and the commands it starts) comes from an emacs buffer.  Output
from the shell as well as commands that don't have there output redirected
ends up in your buffer.  This is nice since it allows you to use the editor
to edit all input to all commands.  The problem is that emacs talks to the
shell using pipes.  This causes all commands that use standard I/O to have
buffered output unless the command specifically unbuffers output.  This makes
interactive commands pretty much useless.  Also, any command that tries to
do an ioctl will fail and the command gives up with a message such as
"Not a tty".

Under BSD, emacs can be compiled to use sockets which, I believe, overcome
these problems (Tell me if this is so, I have little knowledge of sockets
or streams).  We have recently upgraded our Amdahl to UTS 5.2.5 which seems
to have support for streams and remote file system.  The streams primer
seems to indicate its possible to write a stream module to implement
a pseudo-tty that can let all commands started by emacs appear to be connected
to a real tty but, have there output sent to emacs.

My knowledge is next to nothing on streams.  How does one determine what
streams modules there system has?  Are streams modules linked into the kernel?
If this is true, do they also appear in the file system as device drivers do?
Have there been any pseudo-tty streams modules written?  Would it be possible
to do what I want?  Would it be straightforward to convert the emacs code
that makes the socket calls to use streams?

Any help appreciated.
-- 
Doug Scofea  -  djs@cblpe.ATT.COM      Phone: +1 614 860 2065
UUCP:   ...!{akgua,gatech,ihnp4,ulysses}!cbosgd!cblpe!djs