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From: rlk@.COM (Robert Krawitz)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: termcap, flow control, emacs
Message-ID: <5643@think.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Jun-87 08:54:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: think.5643
Posted: Mon Jun 22 08:54:48 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Jun-87 04:01:43 EDT
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Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
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In article <8706211844.AA16179@FYUNCH.MIT.EDU> eichin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU ("Mark W. Eichin") writes:

]Really, wasn't one of the reasons for ^s/^q to be in-band was so that
]they could be generated by the user? At least in the CP/M micro world,
]they were used as flow control for the USER, not just the terminal. The
]standard way for a user to pause output in order to have time to read it
]was to hit ^s.

That's OK, in scrolling situations the user should be able to stop
output, whether with C-s or something else.  But it should be under
the user's control, and the user should not be forced to assume
C-s/C-q are always for flow control (it makes no sense in emacs, for
example).  It works fine for user flow control.  Not so good for
terminal flow control, though...

]Given the age of the 'emacs' series of editors, why did they overload ^s
]even further? RMS, Gosling, anyone out there know? I would guess it was
]simply mnemonic for 'Search', but what equipment of that day let them
]get away with it?

VT52's run just fine, as do AITV's.  The AITV system used bitmap
screens with 9-bit keyboards (Lisp Machine modulo super and hyper
keys).  Considering the people that hacked back then, if they'd been
forced to use equipment forcibly using XON/XOFF flow control, they'd
have hacked it so it wouldn't have.

Emacs didn't start off as someone saying "Let's write emacs from
scratch" (look at the name).  It originally was various macro packages
in Teco under ITS, and then RMS and a few others banged it into shape.
At that time, probably no one ever thought of it as a commercial
product, and so no one saw any real need to make it work with
commercial equipment.

Robert^Z