Automatic Paging/"More"ing

[Clay Phipps]

Per Kenneth Almquist's request, in the hopes of swaying those
who see no justification for an "automatic paging" feature 
in the terminal driver, I am supplying more information
about my specific situation.

My computing environment is as follows:

    Fortune 32:16, multi-user-configured FOR:PRO 1.7 (~4.1 BSD),
        Fortune console, approx. 53kbaud (yes, fifty-three thousand baud).

    VAX 11/780, UNIX 4.1 BSD, Fortune FIS 1000 terminal, 9600 baud.

I have installed the "automatic paging" feature (mentioned by
Warnock | Norskog) on my 32:16.  It's great.

Unlike the average computer user,
I use both the computers to which I have access, 
simultaneously, on a daily basis.
The 32:16 is all mine; the VAX must be shared with many people.
This is a common environment for software development at Fortune.

I handle the varying demands on my attention 
by timesharing myself between the 2 CRTs and 1 desktop.
Design work, coding, debugging, and reading technical papers
often require intensive thought.
Typically, one CRT has a high priority activity than the other.
This is not to say, however, that I am not interested
in reading every single line of text on the low-priority CRT;
it just means that I will wait until I am jolly well ready to look at it,
that is, until I come to a reasonable breaking point in the high priority task.
Therefore, my mental timesharing discipline 
is based on polling, not on interrupts.
I cannot engage in intensive thought if I am having to watch  (i.e., poll)
a >= 9600 baud lower mental priority screen out of the corner of my eye 
so I can suddenly reach over to hit CTRL-S.

It is evident that use of automatic paging is heavily dependent
on one's working style.  
People who do not poll as I poll, or who are interrupt driven,
or have a slow terminal, may not want their CRT to behave as I want mine to.  

I originally suggested that "automatic paging" be optional; I still do.  
Those who don't like it or don't need it can turn it off, 
or if it is disabled by default, leave it off.
However, if the feature isn't there at all, 
those who want it cannot turn it on and leave it on.
How this is most appropriately done (again, for the entire terminal session
until deliberately disabled) is a matter for the gurus among us.

My suggestion that paging is appropriately assigned to the terminal driver
(analogous to handling forms control codes in a printer driver)
still sounds reasonable to me.  Whether device drivers for terminals
belong in the kernel is a largely independent question to my view,
although I certainly cannot claim UNIX guru status.

I hope this has clarified my situation and point of view.

-- Clay Phipps


-- 
   {allegra,amd70,cbosgd,dsd,floyd,harpo,hpda,ihnp4,
    megatest,nsc,oliveb,sri-unix,twg,varian,VisiA,wdl1}
   !fortune!phipps