Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!shelby!csli!gandalf
From: gandalf@csli.Stanford.EDU (Juergen Wagner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Unix Type-ahead problem
Message-ID: <8942@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 12 May 89 05:34:56 GMT
References: <810053@hpsemc.HP.COM>
Sender: gandalf@csli.Stanford.EDU (Juergen Wagner)
Reply-To: gandalf@csli.stanford.edu (Juergen Wagner)
Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U.
Lines: 23

In article <810053@hpsemc.HP.COM> gph@hpsemc.HP.COM (Paul Houtz) writes:
>...
>   Do all unix systems echo the characters to the screen no matter what
>is going on as you type them?  I have only worked on one type.
>...

It depends on whether the driver which accepts character by character from
a terminal echoes input (because it is in some `echo' mode), or whether your
application has to decide the question of echoing.

By default, UNIX shells put the terminal driver into a mode in which it
echoes all its input. That's reasonable for most applications. However, under
Emacs and other programs which perform special interpretation of characters,
and/or wish to maintain a particular screen layout, it is necessary to echo
characters from the respective application program.

If UNIX could echo characters as they are *consumed* by the program which reads
from a terminal, as opposed to when they are *typed*, you would get the desired
behavior.

-- 
Juergen Wagner		   			gandalf@csli.stanford.edu
						 wagner@arisia.xerox.com