DUMP is too verbose

[Griff Smith]

> What is the purpose of DUMP periodically repeating its prompts to
> mount a new tape, ask for retry, etcetera? Seems redundant to me, and not
> in the spirit of Unix, to nag the user in this way and fill the terminal
> with verbiage.

In our center, the user is an operator.  A mild reminder that (s)he has
taken too long seems appropriate.  The entry on the log file generated
by the backup script is also useful for monitoring speed of service.

...

> On the same subject, DUMP's prompt lines are too long; couldn't they be
> trimmed to 80 (or even 72) characters to avoid ugly wrapping?

I would rather have a clear command to the operator than a cryptic
comment intended for a wizard.  The carriage on our operator's
hard-copy console is 132 wide; wrapping is no problem.  Are we talking
about the same program?  Most of the output from "dump" is 60
characters or less.

> -- 
> ______________________________________________________
> 
>       .^.^.      Dan Razzell <razzell at vision.ubc.cdn>
>      . o o .     Laboratory for Computational Vision
>      . >v< .     University of British Columbia
> ______mm.mm___________________________________________
-- 

Griff Smith	AT&T (Bell Laboratories), Murray Hill
Phone:		(201) 582-7736
Internet:	ggs at ulysses.uucp
UUCP:		ulysses!ggs  ( {allegra|ihnp4}!ulysses!ggs )