bhaskar%LBL-CSAM@fluke.UUCP (06/05/83)
From: K.S. Bhaskar <fluke!bhaskar@LBL-CSAM>
Does anyone have an inverse termcap filter? One problem with Unix is that
there is a ridiculous lack of sharing of code -- everyone is busy re-inventing
the wheel. For example, screen-oriented interaction with the user is a
tremendous improvement over the tty paradigm of most Unix software, but
everyone writes his own screen oriented human interface, instead of building
on something like emacs. I can't fight this, so, I am looking for an even
more contorted piece of absurdity that will improve my overall human
interface. Essentially, I would like to make an emacs buffer look like a
terminal to a program like notesfile, so that the escape sequences coming out
of Unix are translated to appropriate mlisp commands so that the buffer looks
reasonably like a terminal screen (the program would have to be written in
mlisp). Does anyone have such a beastie? Is my question ridiculous? Is
there anyone who disagrees that it is desirable to invent the human interface
once and have this re-used? Is there anything better than Gosling's emacs
available today (or in the near future) for this purpose?
K.S. Bhaskar, John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, Washington
On Usenet: {allegra,lbl-csam,microsoft,sb1,uw-beaver}!fluke!bhaskar
>From Arpanet: fluke!bhaskar@lbl-csambhaskar@fluke.UUCP (06/05/83)
Does anyone have an inverse termcap filter? One problem with Unix is that
there is a ridiculous lack of sharing of code -- everyone is busy re-inventing
the wheel. For example, screen-oriented interaction with the user is a
tremendous improvement over the tty paradigm of most Unix software, but
everyone writes his own screen oriented human interface, instead of building
on something like emacs. I can't fight this, so, I am looking for an even
more contorted piece of absurdity that will improve my overall human
interface. Essentially, I would like to make an emacs buffer look like a
terminal to a program like notesfile, so that the escape sequences coming out
of Unix are translated to appropriate mlisp commands so that the buffer looks
reasonably like a terminal screen (the program would have to be written in
mlisp). Does anyone have such a beastie? Is my question ridiculous? Is
there anyone who disagrees that it is desirable to invent the human interface
once and have this re-used? Is there anything better than Gosling's emacs
available today (or in the near future) for this purpose?
K.S. Bhaskar, John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, Washington
On Usenet: {allegra,lbl-csam,microsoft,sb1,uw-beaver}!fluke!bhaskarchris.umcp-cs%UDel-Relay@sri-unix.UUCP (06/06/83)
From: Chris Torek <chris.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay> From: K.S. Bhaskar <fluke!bhaskar@LBL-CSAM> . . . Essentially, I would like to make an emacs buffer look like a terminal to a program like notesfile, so that the escape sequences coming out of Unix are translated to appropriate mlisp commands so that the buffer looks reasonably like a terminal screen (the program would have to be written in mlisp). Does anyone have such a beastie? Well, we have somthing similar: the "window shell" (wsh). This, along with a window library (based on Gosling's Emacs display update and some of the ideas in Emacs [e.g. separate buffers and windows]), does just that. (Come to think of it, part of the wsh is based on ideas in Emacs -- using multiplexed files to simulate a terminal.) This will all be distributable once we clean it up and so forth (to keep the lawyers happy). Is there anyone who disagrees that it is desirable to invent the human interface once and have this re-used? Is there anything better than Gosling's emacs available today (or in the near future) for this purpose? But then how could we amaze people with our arcane knowledge of hundreds of different interfaces? :-) - Chris
hdj@burdvax.UUCP (06/14/83)
K.S. Bhaskar raises an interesting point about Emacs: ... I would like to make an emacs buffer look like a terminal to a program like notesfile, so that the escape sequences coming out of Unix are translated to appropriate mlisp commands so that the buffer looks reasonably like a terminal screen (the program would have to be written in mlisp). I had been thinking about this recently, and I have come up with a way of doing it that would be compatible with the rest of Emacs; though I haven't really investigated the implementation of this scheme, I have a feeling it would not be too hard to do. If we combine the ideas of "filtered processes" and keymaps, it becomes clear that some sort of synthesis of the two ideas might be a solution to the problem. Output from a process would pass through a keymap; arbitrary mlisp functions could be bound to the special character sequences of the filtered process. For instance, if a program output ctrl-L to clear the screen, we could bind ctrl-L in the filter keymap to, say, erase-buffer. And so on. I welcome any and all comments on these somewhat half-baked ideas.
bhaskar@fluke.UUCP (06/16/83)
burdvax!hdj's idea of combining the ideas of a filtered process and keymaps is probably the most elegant way to achieve an inverse termcap filter. i like it. -- bhaskar