haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie) (07/13/88)
[ In a previous article Doug Alan expounded on the virtues of kernel support for input line editting and virtual terminal output. ] this is possible where the number of terminals which are supported is limited to some subset. a unix system may have any number of different terminals with their different methods of handling features connected. the only microcomputer operating system i've seen which had a virtual screen was the p-system. it handled screen updates by homing and redrawing the entire screen. ibm's (and others) large machine operating systems can afford to redraw the screen since terminal i/o is so damned fast (for non-serial devices, such as coax). for the typical unix system with it's hudge-podge of devices and slow serial i/o, i don't believe virtual terminal support really belongs in the kernel. - john. -- John "Evil USENET User" F. Haugh II HECI Exploration Co, Inc., Dallas UUCP: ...!killer!rpp386!jfh jfh@rpp386.UUCP :DOMAIN **** Trivia question of the day: VYARZERZIMANIMORORSEZASSEZANSERAREORSES? **** "You are in a twisty little maze of UUCP connections, all alike" -- fortune
nessus@wonko.MIT.EDU (Doug Alan) (07/14/88)
In article <249@pigs.UUCP> haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie) writes: > In a previous article Doug Alan expounded on the virtues of kernel support > for input line editting and virtual terminal output. > this is possible where the number of terminals which are supported is > limited to some subset. Hey, I never said that line editting and virtual terminal support belong in the kernal! I don't know how you got this idea. In fact, I think they definitely don't! Where they belong is in a special process devoted to this task. This allows an infinite number of different types of terminals to be supported because the process can be anything the user wants and can be configurable. Now, to make this work seamlessly may require a few kernal mods, and those, I think, should be done. In any case, I just posted a big article more precisely saying how I think things should be. See that. |>oug /\lan
bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (07/14/88)
I think people should restrain themselves from posting their wish lists for software. Too much of it is easily mistaken for sarcasm, or little children insisting there should be Peace on Earth. Anal expulsive, basically. Code, show us code! (what I can't believe is that we all tolerate this sort of drivel but that guy posts the code for ile and *he* gets flamed! I wonder if unix-wizards hasn't sunk beneath redemption, an emotional outlet for software bureaucrats and the Shop till you Drop crowd. Don't tell me there are "appropriate" places to post code, many of us don't distinguish between describing some design wish in english or code, except that the latter is worth looking at as it carries some force of plausibility, it's not the fact that a design argument is written in C (eg), it's whether or not it's pertinent to the issue at hand. I'd far rather see the list "flooded" with code that implements possible designs than masturbatory drivel that usually starts off by presuming PI == 3.0, the earth is flat, man is basically good and other "little" conveniences.) -Barry Shein, Boston University The only thing thing we seem to learn from history is that we do not learn anything from history -- Hegel (roughly paraphrased)