Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!pur-ee!j.cc.purdue.edu!nwd
From: nwd@j.cc.purdue.edu (Daniel Lawrence)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Grrr... uEmacs 3.10 doesn't work under Xenix
Summary: ANSI vs TERMCAP
Keywords: uEMACS 3.10
Message-ID: <9332@j.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 13 Apr 89 14:26:54 GMT
References: <56344@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <9313@j.cc.purdue.edu> <13576@steinmetz.ge.com> <588@ispi.UUCP> <56803@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Reply-To: nwd@j.cc.purdue.edu (Daniel Lawrence)
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 40

In article <56803@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> spolsky-joel@CS.YALE.EDU (Joel Spolsky) writes:
>In article <588@ispi.UUCP> jbayer@ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) writes:
>>In article <13576@steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>>>  I think we may have failed to make it clear that support for ANSI
>>>keysequences is needed in UNIX versions. Termcap support won't do it. I
>>>posted fixes for this in every version from 3.7? to 3.10beta and none of
>>>them ever got picked up.
>
	[long discusion of TERMCAP vs ANSI deleted...]

>Humph. I don't see why every poor joe slob that wants to use
>microEmacs should have to (1) figure out that his function keys dont
>work (2) find the source to uEmacs, (3) find that obscure comment in
>tcap.c about the termcap (4) change the /etc/termcap file.
>
>Chances are most users won't get to stage 3, and can't change the
>/etc/termcap without the system administrator. Assuming that they
>understand these things. Basically it's gotten twice as hard to get
>uEmacs to work.
>
	So, the 10,000 students here at Purdue would then have to
1) Fire up MicroEMACS, 2) figure out that they don't have an ANSI
terminal, 3) Curse me for not providing any support for the hundreds of
adm-3a, wyse, etc terminals around campus.  Chances are if users get to
stage 3 they will have to go in and write their own screen drivers to
get it to work at all.

	I am not resisting attempts to support your ansi driver, and
would be willing to provide it as well, I am just overloaded with things
to support on right now and I am desperatly trying to get all the
versions running now.

	As far as standards on UNIX are concerned, you and I and
hundreds of developers have been waiting around for one to come forth
for years now.  Is it time we decided to come up with one ourselves?

					Daniel Lawrence
					(317) 742-5153 nwd@j.cc.purdue.edu
					The Programmer's Room Fido 1:201/10
					(317) 742-5533