jpk@ur-univax.UUCP (05/13/85)
Regarding the "right" way to design a terminal interface: All that has been cited in favor of DG terminal interfaces as far as user friendlyness (command line editing etc) could also be said of VMS, starting with version 4.0, and of course assuming you buy only DEC or DEC-compatible terminals. But the applications programmer has to become something of a systems hacker to make use of anything other than default input mode. What I'd like to see is something that could be called both user- and programmer- friendly. Simply, consistent calls to the terminal i/o facilities that can assume or inhibit any aspect of screen behavior. Incidentally, typeahead echoing is a behavior that DEC never could decide about. Echoing was immediate on TOPS-10, immediate, delayed, or ignored on RSX, depending on reads queued to the terminal, and delayed until read by the application program (whether user software or the command line reader) on RT-11 and VMS. On TOPS-20, however, you could choose either immediate or delayed mode. Since that is the only environment where I could experiment, I did so, and decided that I like my reads echoed only when the program gets them. It fixes reads with no echo like passwords, and produces predictable, consistent screen displays. Anything which maniplulates the screen needs it anyhow. -- Jon Krueger
jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) (05/16/85)
> Incidentally, typeahead echoing is a behavior that DEC never could > decide about. Echoing was immediate on TOPS-10, ... That's the truth! With the more recent versions of TOPS-10 (I think the versions after 7.02, but I forget), they have changed it; you get to choose either immediate echoing, or echoing at the time of the read. The latter is called "deferred echo" in TOPS-10. -- Full-Name: J. Eric Roskos UUCP: ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!peora!jer US Mail: MS 795; Perkin-Elmer SDC; 2486 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32809-7642