alleged Disgusting kernel hack (contains free kernel paginator)

[Robert Elz]

I don't believe it!  I had considered the original article to be
a joke, & had considered mailing a complaint at those who took
it seriously & sent articles ridiculing the idea.  Now we have code ????

The kernel simply does not have enough information to get pagination
right (apart from problems of terminal that do, or do not wrap long
lines).

What you want paginated is the output from some program, and then only
really when its coming quickly (when I do "cc *.c" I don't want, or
expect, it to stop after 24 files, cause it thinks that I want to
look at the names of the files its compiling - but I do want the output,
cause I like the security of knowing that its still happening out there).

Similarly, if someone else writes at me, while I'm taking a half hour
or so to gaze at some particularly interesting piece of news (or perhaps
if one of the less interesting has sent me to sleep), I don't think they
will take it too kindly if their message request gets held up until I
decide to scroll the screen.

Way back in v6 days, we had a terminal driver at Melbourne that did
all that (it did *everything*).  Its one unused, & very soon discarded
"feature" was pagination.

To all sites out there who have managed to resist this bug in their
tty drivers:  Don't be misled by "free" code, it isn't often that you
get something for free that's worth having, & this isn't one of those
rare occasions.

Finally, to those who criticize "more" as being a slow & bulky paginator:
It isn't a paginator.  Its a program to display data on a terminal, which
includes pagination, re-display, pattern searches, ...  Maybe that shouldn't
all be in one program, but then again, maybe it should.  It has a well
defined job to do, & does just that.  However, please don't assume
that I'm defending its bugs, it has had, & continues to have rather a lot
of them, perhaps it is a good target for re-implementation, maybe
someone can get the code right.

If all you want is a paginator, about 15 minutes & less than a page
of code will give you one.

Robert Elz,		decvax!mulga!kre