Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ucsd!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: where to do line editing?
Message-ID: <8296@smoke.ARPA>
Date: 2 Aug 88 06:29:22 GMT
References: <678@gtx.com> <593@blblbl.UUCP> <8263@brl-smoke.ARPA> <611@tub.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 25

In article <611@tub.UUCP> net@tub.UUCP (Oliver Laumann) writes:
>The terminal does not know what a `word' is.

So teach it.
If you can't put editing in your terminal, then put it in a stream
module as near to your terminal as possible, so it can apply to all
processes being operated on the host.
It is also probably a good idea not to switch the editing "commands"
between applications, since that can get confusing and at least slow
down the user (who has to pause briefly to recall what to do).

>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.

To keep lines of communication as short as possible and thereby
enhance interactivity.

Last Friday, while helping one of the programmers here track down
an EXTREMELY obscure bug, I really exploited the dickens out of my
630's ability to support local editing.  I estimate that it would
have been at least twice as much work to have had to use an
ordinary dumb terminal for that debugging session.  And I wasn't
even in layers (multi-window) mode.  (If I had been, I could have
tapped into "sam"'s powerful editing command language and saved
even more time.)