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From: dce@mips.UUCP (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Window size in 4.3BSD and tset
Message-ID: <691@quacky.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Sep-87 12:02:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: quacky.691
Posted: Thu Sep 17 12:02:24 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Sep-87 15:33:06 EDT
References: <813@saturn.ucsc.edu> <4280@spool.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: dce@quacky.UUCP (David Elliott)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 38
Keywords: windows 4.3 tset

In article <4280@spool.wisc.edu> dave@spool.wisc.edu (Dave Cohrs) writes:
>change size to almost any shape you want.  I doubt that you'd want a
>separate termcap entry for each possible window size.  Anyway, once you

This is not a reasonable doubt. I have worked (and currently work) in
environments where some people use sysline and some don't and some people
like lots of lines and some like big characters, and nobody likes
termcap entries that change their screen size. Also, people often use
different types of terminals in different areas (home, office, lab).

So, at Tek, we had a complete set of Ann Arbor Ambassador termcap
entries, and people were allowed to set their default terminal
type (/etc/ttytype and /etc/ttys files).

Also, there exist terminals for which it may not be reasonable to
allow size changes without termcap changes(!). For example, in 80-
column mode, the Wyse 60 terminal allows you to send ^[[y;xH (6
bytes) to do cursor motion. In 132-column mode, it's ^[ayyyRxxxC
(10 bytes), and this can make a difference between whether that
slow processor botches the job or not. Therefore, we actually
have differences in the cm strings.

Another advantage is that if you use tset and different termcap
entries, all you have to do is set up simple aliases to change
to the modes you commonly use, and have tset do the terminal
initialization. Having to go into setup mode is not fun, especially
if the two terminals you use work differently.

The real problem is that whoever added the terminal window size
setting to tset wasn't thinking about terminals that change
size on the fly.

Can you name a terminal for which changing the termcap to one
with a different size would not really change the screen size?
I mean, if I say I'm on an 24x80 terminal and then say I'm
on a 43x132 terminal, why shouldn't the window size change?
-- 
David Elliott		{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!dce