mac@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Mike Cohen) (10/30/89)
Here is a question re NeWs. I would like to write a simple interface which took a sgimenu item placed you on a line in the window menu and queried for a response. Using the data for from this response is started up another program. What I have in mind is a menu item for edge which would request the name of the program to be debugged then did a {(edge <programname>) forkunix}. All the ways I see to do this involve reasonable involved programming for such a simple request. (Like setting up an event handler for each character which is silly for such a simple task). I guess I have in mind something like an X11 widget. If such is not available as a Litemenu or SGIMENU or Toolchest method it ought to be. With this in mind I'd like to report some bugs: 1. Any killing of the console window by an external process (after /etc/gl/startconsole, makes reconnection of the console impossible via restart. What happens is one gets a console window connected to device ? instead of /dev/console. 2. psh executive console 80 string readline Running a postscript shell which has such a code in it hangs in the readline echoing what it reads intermidably. 3. Starting edge from a postscript shell i.e. (edge) { (getenv EDGE) (edge ) exch append forkunix } in a menu entry or in psh produces an edge window which doesn't type out <CRLF> to the created window. The terminal settings are quite wierd. A dump is available on request. I can see know way of resetting the terminal properly I tried a (stty correct settings) forkunix. But this didn't work. I'm sure this is not all that difficult. I'm a fan of NeWS, my feeling about it is NeWS/X11 as EMACS/TECO. But the available NeWS docs except perhaps for the Sun ones are not terribly clear. In regard to Gosling's book, I find it quite useful, but elementary. Is the Sun NewS documentation any better than 4sight docs I have? The docs contain a useful set of implimented codes. But both demos and docs are woefully short on the type of example I would like to see, i.e. programming NeWS efficiently to interact with the rest of the operating system. -mike