printf, data presentation

[Paul Sander]

In article <9281 at smoke.BRL.MIL>, gwyn at smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
> In article <11064 at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> cjc at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Chris Calabrese[mav]) writes:
> >Besides, who uses a character terminal any more :-) :-) :-) :-)
> 
> Exactly.  That's why I don't support standardization of curses-like
> interfaces.  It's an idea whose time has gone.

Hey, wait a minute.  There are an awful lot of people still using character
terminals.  Some of my company's customers rely on them.  I've seen
installations where literally hundreds of programmers have had to share
bitmap terminals that could be counted on the knuckles of one finger.
No joke!  And they make up for it by using ASCII terminals.  And I make
my living developing user interfaces for these people.

There used to be a saying that "not all the world's a VAX."  Perhaps we
should also remember that "not all the world's a Sun/Apollo/Mac/insert-
favorite-desktop-workstation-with-bitmap-terminal-here."
-- 
Paul Sander        (408) 734-9822       | Do YOU get nervous when a
paul at Atherton.COM                       | sys{op,adm,prg,engr} says
{decwrl,sun,hplabs!hpda}!athertn!paul   | "oops..." ?