Pagination in TTY driver

[Bob Mabee]

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(referring to novice and expert users of ls)
> From *both* viewpoints, it is simpler to have pagination available in the
> tty driver.  This means that the implementors don't have to kludge it into
> every program, and the users need neither lightning reflexes nor high
> sophistication.	 Try it, you'll like it.
> -- 
> 				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology

This sounds like a fruitful topic of discussion.  I would like to see this
become a "standard extension" like file locking.

Please tell us more about your user interface.  Do you require a Y every
23 lines of output?  Only after 23 lines without intervening input (so
you never notice pagination while running less verbose commands?

What are the drawbacks?  Do "portable" UNIX programs have to be modified
to disable pagination for editing, communications, etc?  Does the TTY
driver have to decode cursor motion sequences (as Multics did)?

--
				Bob Mabee @ Charles River Data Systems
				decvax!frog!rfm