Strangeness in shell

[Paul De Bra]

In article <5404 at ficc.uu.net> peter at ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
}In article <10639 at smoke.BRL.MIL>, gwyn at smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) writes:
}> -> The right place for ksh -type command line editing is in the terminal
}> -> driver or xterm!
}
}> Some of us think the right place is in the terminal!
}
}That's the moral equivalent of the terminal driver. My Amiga gives me this
}sort of capability, via cut and paste with the mouse, as do other people's
}Macs and Atari STs if they have any sort of decent terminal program (when
}I had an ST, I didn't, but that was a long time ago and I don't hold that
}agin it).
}
}The one problem with this approach is that you really should only maintain
}a command line history when you're in canonical mode (ICANON, or COOKED).
}You don't want your vi or emacs commands messing up your buffer. I guess
}you could modify the termcap for your terminal to turn buffering off and
}on when you enter or leave a screen-oriented program... (goes off muttering
}about VS and VE...)

Yep, you just reinvented the jerq, blit, 5620 (or whatever generation)
terminal. Multiple windows, a special protocol for communication with
the multiple processes on the host, local command line editing in the
terminal (cut, paste, mouse driven)... Special terminal ioctl's to turn
echo on and off (you wouldn't want half-duplex while typing a password), etc.

We could hardly believe our eyes when we discovered that this local command
line editing went away in the new and "improved" AT&T 630 MTG terminal. (sigh)

Paul.
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