Disgusting kernel hack - (nf)

[Barry Margolin]

     bradley!brad    Jan 17 10:23:00 1984

     I agree, why hack the kernel. Use 'more',

I think Laura Creighton (sp?) answered this well enough.

     I would also like to
     add one other thought. If you had a terminal paging mode, and the
     process you ran only put out lets say 15 lines, it wouldn't page,
     Right? Well what happens when the next process you run is also 15
     lines, Does it stop at 8 lines into the program output? Or is it
     smart enough to do reset the counter.

The counter should be reset whenever you take input from the terminal,
and there should be an IOCTL to reset it, too.  This is another reason
for putting it into the kernel; consider the disgusting ":" hack in
readnews that is an attempt to get around the fact that it is only
reasonable to put one article at a time through 'more'.

     Also what about 'stderr'?

What about 'stderr'?  The kernel doesn't know from this; it just sees
one terminal.

     What bit are you going to use to set this mode? And how standard
     will it be with other programs. Also you will have to turn it off
     for editors, like vi (but they do ioctl) but what about
     'ed'?

Certainly vi and emacs have to turn it off.  What problem do you see
with ed?  Is there something wrong with paging the output of '1,$p'?
-- 
			Barry Margolin
			ARPA: barmar at MIT-Multics
			UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar