Input Line Editing

[Root Boy Jim]

? From: Guy Harris <guy at gorodish.sun.com>

? > As for editors, I'd love to see one included in the terminal driver.

? Gak.  *I*'d* love to see all line editing *removed* from the terminal driver,
? if by that you mean the thing in the kernel that responds to characters
? arriving over a serial line or pseudo-tty.  I'd like to see it done in a
? program, just as Doug suggested.

? One advantage of *NOT* doing it in the kernel is that, as you
? pointed out, not everybody *does* want the same editor; if you put
? it in the kernel, users can't generally just replace it easily.

One way arount that is via the bind command. Make the editing primitives
`suffifiently general', and let the user bind funtion keys to the appropriate
funtions. Command files to bind commonly used editing sets could be placed
in /usr/pub (it's about time something else was put there :-).

I don't know much about streams, but perhaps that's the way to go.

	(Root Boy) Jim Cottrell	<rbj at icst-cmr.arpa>
	National Bureau of Standards
	Flamer's Hotline: (301) 975-5688
	The opinions expressed are solely my own
	and do not reflect NBS policy or agreement
	Careful with that VAX Eugene!