Portability and the Ivory Tower (was Re: Book on Microsoft C)

[Peter da Silva]

In article <425bf40d.b11a at falcon.engin.umich.edu>, ejd at caen.engin.umich.edu (Edward J Driscoll) writes:
> Your point is certainly worth taking into consideration.  My
> reply question would be:  Are you willing to stick with
> teletype compatibility forever?

Machine independent code does not imply teletype compatibility. There have
been a range of machine-independent screen- and graphic- oriented
environments (in order of increasing sophistication):

	Termcap.
	Curses.
	X-Windows.
	NeWS.

'vi' was designed and written on a PDP-11 running UNIX V7. The terminals
available were ADM-3as, Heath-19s, and HP 2621a. I am using an 80286
running System III UNIX with a Televideo 955 terminal. And that's just
the first level in the hierarchy...

> In all honesty, if the
> application is that valuable then the odds are good that I 
> would be willing to hold out for backward-compatible hardware.

And so people build backwards-compatible hardware that cripples the NEXT
generation of applications. Great thinking.
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.

Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter at ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180.
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