modern terminals (was: printf, data presentation)

[Brandon S. Allbery]

As quoted from <2664 at ficc.uu.net> by peter at ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva):
+---------------
| In article <11072 at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>, ggs at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Griff Smith) writes:
| > I'll repeat Doug's reply: the AT&T 630 terminal is available for less
| > than $2k.  Support software for either System V or 4.3BSD is also
| > available.  I don't think Doug is dreaming; if you're stuck with an old
| > 24x80 non-windowed terminal, it's more like a nightmare.
| 
| Most of the UNIX systems in the world run Xenix, not System V or BSD. I
| strongly suspect the majority of these Xenix systems are still running
| System III-based kernels.
+---------------

It's worse than you think, Peter:  Xenix 3.x runs a *V7* kernel.  Some, but
not all, of the System III functionality has been added, but it's still
basically V7.

As for Doug and the other fancy-terminal lovers:  Add the cost of the
support software for your fancy terminals (one-time cost per CPU, admitted)
and people in the real world won't be interested.  Case in point:  none
(well, maybe *one* out of all) of our clients are interested in a windowing
setup we've been looking at, to see if it's worth selling.  If you can show
these people a complete setup *and* a way to retrofit all of their
precompiled applications to use it effectively (that does *not* mean a
"terminal emulator" window in the X style, people!), for a cost equivalent
to a handful of WY-50's, *then* they will be interested.

++Brandon
(P.S. Just in case I'm confusing people:  the "our" above refers to
Telotech, which is not related to ncoast in any way [except that I work for
one and administer the other ;-) ].)
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc    allbery at ncoast.org (soon)
uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery		    ncoast!allbery at hal.cwru.edu
      Send comp.sources.misc submissions to comp-sources-misc@<backbone>
NCoast Public Access UN*X - (216) 781-6201, 300/1200/2400 baud, login: makeuser