Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:15549 comp.unix.wizards:14139
Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!munnari!murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au!cs.mu.oz.au!kre
From: kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: spiffy terminals
Message-ID: <1162@murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au>
Date: 15 Jan 89 12:41:20 GMT
References: <443@marob.MASA.COM> <11067@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <408@ispi.UUCP> <9364@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au
Lines: 28


This discussion has gotten way out of hand.  There's no question that
bit mapped terminals (630's, X terminals, Suns, etc) are "better" than
24x80's (that is, they enable the user to be more productive).

There's also no question than that they cost more.  The result of this
is a standard price/performance trade-off, and there is NO "right"
answer that will suit everyone.

However, this all started, as has been pointed out before, with questions
about curses, and some comment that curses is obsolete, because the fancy
new terminals are all that matters now.

That's simply trash .. even given that everyone has a fancy new terminal,
they're not all the same.  A program written for a 630 isn't going to
run on a X terminal, nor on a Sun running NeWS or SunView, nor on a ...

However, a program written for curses will run on all of those.

Until there's a real standard window system actually out there, and in use
in a large enough number of places that you don't care that your application
will only run on that subset, sane designers or portable applications will
continue to use curses wherever possible, despite all its drawbacks.

With that in mind, improvments to curses are still useful, and will
continue to be into the forseeable future.

kre