Many xenix questions

[Joseph H Allen]

Hi, I've had the experience of developing some software for a xenix 2.3 system
(Radio Shack model 4000 and a no-name brand Pc- Eagle 386 motherboard) and
I've accumulated some questions:  

- What is the story with xenix's parallel printer driver? It's extremely slow-
  even after using the polled option.  What I eventually did is write my own
  device driver for it.  This fixed the problem but introduced a
  new one: I made it a non-interrupt driven driver and it loads the system
  tremendously.

- Is the C compiler ANSI or not?  The manual says that it's ANSI but
  prototypes don't work.  Am I not setting some switch or something?

- Is GNU C available for xenix?  And if so, is it enough to replace the
  $500 developement package?  (does run-time package give you a linker?)

- I've seen in some ad somewhere that there is a board which allows you
  to put multiple keyboards/hercules cards into the system.  This seems
  like a very sane alternative to terminals.  Has anyone had any experience
  with this?

- Are the ethernet/internet programs I'm used to on BSD UNIX available on
  xenix? (ftp, telnet, rlogin, talk, etc.)  And can these be tricked into
  using phone lines instead of ethernet?

- Has anyone experienced developing graphics software for xenix?  Does it
  let you map video memory into user's processes?  What happens with the
  screen flipping stuff (ALT-F1, ALT-F2, etc..)?

- Is there any way of printing graphs from SCO professional without having to
  use the stupid top-level menu system ("pro" I think it's called- as opposed
  to procalc, the actual spreadsheet program)?  What I need is a pure
  unix-like command to do this.  Also, can procalc display
  graphs on the console? (not text graphics, real hercules graphics)

- Does VP/ix work?  Does it support graphics?  How about multiple video
  cards?  What happens to the ALT-function keys?

- Is there any plan for a mkdir() system call?  Not having it is a major
  pain since it means that you can't use sticky-bitted programs to
  create directories.  Can you add system calls with the link-kit?  Or
  could you make a device driver directory maker? (for people who don't
  understand this problem:  the mkdir command is root sticky bitted.  If
  you're a user and you run a sticky bitted program (say an accounting package
  with "account" sticky-bit) then that program can't make a directory
  in other "account" directories since when you run the mkdir program the root
  sticky bit on it only lets it get the real user i.D., not the effective
  I.D. of the caller)