Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!ames!ncar!tank!oddjob!matt
From: matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Matt Crawford)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: New (GNU) kernels--what I think
Message-ID: <3577@tank.uchicago.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 89 20:45:41 GMT
References: <19834@adm.BRL.MIL> <445@lexicon.com>
Sender: news@tank.uchicago.edu
Reply-To: matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Matt Crawford)
Organization: Koyaanisqatsi
Lines: 17
In-reply-to: rk@lexicon.com (Bob Kukura)

In article <445@lexicon.com>, rk@lexicon (Bob Kukura) writes:
) One approach to this would be to replace the argv mechanism with some
) sort of interactive scheme.  A shell would start up an application as
) soon as its command name was successfully completed, and then would
) communicate with the application using some protocol to determine the
) namespace from which completion alternatives for each argument come, ...

Awfully hard to graft this onto unix, though, since you don't know what
to tie the file descriptors to until you get past all the arguments.

Last time this came up, about 2-3 years ago, I suggested sticking a
structure in a well-known place in the object file, with the structure
describing the valid argument list.  The application would then not have
to contain the completion and prompting code; that would be in the shell
(so every shell could do it differently  :-).
________________________________________________________
Matt Crawford	     		matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu