Type-ahead in unix

[Rob McMahon]

In article <50ed9956.cb12 at dabo.citi.umich.edu> rees at citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees)
writes: 
>[ about the Apollo DM and its pads ]
>You hated it because you're still thinking of it as a vt100 emulator.  DM
>pads are not vt100s.  If you want a vt100, start one up -- I recommend xterm.

But the article I was replying to was extolling the virtues of the DM pad type
of interface.  Okay, so I can turn it off, and make it behave like any other
Unix, but that's not the point.  The old ICL Perq has this same two-window
approach, and I've used it under Apollo's Domain/OS (?), and under their Unix,
and I think it's a pain.

On a constructive note, I used to quite like the Burroughs MCP/CANDE approach
of holding up output while you were half-way through an input line, allowing
you to see and edit the line you were typing, and then releasing it when you
hit return, until you had typed the first character of the next line.  On the
whole, though, with ^R, and with automatic reprint when you try to delete a
character that's before a chunk of output, I prefer the Unix approach.

Rob
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Rob McMahon, Computing Services, Warwick University, Coventry CV4 7AL, England