Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!marque!uunet!mcvax!unido!tub!net
From: net@tub.UUCP (Oliver Laumann)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: where to do line editing?
Message-ID: <611@tub.UUCP>
Date: 1 Aug 88 13:07:11 GMT
References: <678@gtx.com> <593@blblbl.UUCP> <8263@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: net@tub.UUCP (Oliver Laumann)
Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany
Lines: 25

In article <8263@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
> Terminal input editing belongs where the input is being done,
> namely the terminal.

I don't know if this really the place where it belongs.  Consider
the line editing function `delete word' (control-w in the Berkeley
tty-driver).  Ideally, the operation carried out by `delete word'
should depend on the type of text being input.  For instance, the way
it is defined in the Berkeley tty-driver is useful for plain english
text, while I would like the character `/' act as a delimiter in
addition to white space when typing commands in the shell
(so that I can easily correct typos in pathnames), and `-' should
be an additional delimiter when I enter Lisp expression in a Lisp
interpreter.

The terminal does not know what a `word' is.

I can't suggest an ideal solution; I just wanted to point out that
putting line editing into the terminal is certainly not ideal.
In addition, I don't quite understand why the fact that the terminal
is the place ``where the input is being done'' is a reason why
line editing should be belong there.

--
Oliver Laumann              net@TUB.BITNET              net@tub.UUCP