Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!daveb
From: daveb@geac.UUCP (David Collier-Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Character echo at read time
Message-ID: <3217@geac.UUCP>
Date: 11 Sep 88 17:39:49 GMT
Article-I.D.: geac.3217
References: <1059@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Organization: GEAC Computers, Toronto, CANADA
Lines: 34


  Gentlebeings, we may be wandering down the garden path here:
It is probably a bad idea to select **either** echo-on-entry or
echo-on-read behavior...

  Being able to set the echoing behavior ("local echo") and
forwarding character(s) is a usefull facility of various network's
PADs (Packet Assempler-Disassemblers), and has been used to improve
the apparent response of distant machines over a network[1]. I
strongly suspect it can be used in a local environment for similar
purposes, having prototyped a field editor that did exactly that.

  Remebering the commnet of the designers of Unix about having to
choose a single, simple way to do each seperate thing, I suspect
that they correctly chose to 
	1) echo on input, by default, and
	2) allow one to change this behavior.
  Since they did so, a given application (like the shell) can choose
to set the behavior however it likes: other applications (like an
editor) can change it to what they want when desirable.

  So you pays your money and takes your choice.

--dave c-b
[1] printing characters are echoed immediatly and not forwarded
    until timeout or entry of non-printing characters. Non-printing
    characters are not echoed, but are forwarded along with the rest
    of the packet to the host. See also Bernie Greenbergs' article
    on Multics Emacs, which put this "negotiated echo" to good use.
  
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.  | yunexus!lethe!dave
 78 Hillcrest Ave,.    | He's so smart he's dumb.
 Willowdale, Ontario.  |        --Joyce C-B