Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!hal!ncoast!allbery From: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: job control is a bug, not a feature Message-ID: <13747@ncoast.ORG> Date: 13 Jun 89 01:20:59 GMT References: <16497@louie.udel.EDU> <11989@bcsaic.UUCP> <2775@munnari.oz> <798@gara.une.oz> <8167@boring.cwi.nl> <1989Jun7.224933.700@utzoo.uucp> <17958@mimsy.UUCP> Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) Followup-To: comp.os.minix Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh Lines: 51 As quoted from <17958@mimsy.UUCP> by jds@mimsy.UUCP (James da Silva): +--------------- | In article <1989Jun7.224933.700@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: | >Job control is a stupid, poorly-thought-out, ass-backwards excuse for a | >window system. | | Interesting. I often find myself using job control to stop a process | without killing it. Or doing simple things like putting ftp, | compress, or rm into the background when they are taking longer than | expected. How does your alternative handle things like these? Do I | have to explicitly run each command in a separate window? +--------------- I use JSB Multiview at work; if I need to kill a process or want to switch something into the "background", I just pop up the Multiview menu and select or open another window to work in. -> If you can't manipulate windows dynamically, it's a p*ss-poor window system. +--------------- | >No, you do not need a bitmapped display to do a window system. | | Granted. Do you need a fast terminal? How do I do windows at 2400 | baud without spending all my time redrawing the screen, or dividing | its 25x80 chars into tiny `windows'? +--------------- "Window system" does not necessarily imply multiple on-screen windows. I use Multiview with 80x25 (status line on our terminals is also windowed!) -- and BSD comes with a critter called "screen" which does the same thing, 80x25 "windows". With this setup, it costs little more (only pty overhead) to run windows as not -- I also use MultiView over the modem, although not often because it has a rather brain-damaged way of dealing with insert/delete multiple lines (ANSI ESC [ nnn L, et alia). +--------------- | >If anyone is interested, I think I still have the scathing commentary on | >job control that Ian and I did at the time. | | I'm interested. I think you should post to comp.os.minix; Minix is | about learning OS design tradeoffs, after all. +--------------- Seconded. Although you might cross-post to comp.unix.wizards, assuming you want to start a flame war ;-) ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc allbery@ncoast.org uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu Send comp.sources.misc submissions to comp-sources-misc@ NCoast Public Access UN*X - (216) 781-6201, 300/1200/2400 baud, login: makeuser