windows on normal terminals

[John Owens]

In article <562 at bcsaic.UUCP>, michaelm at bcsaic.UUCP (michael maxwell) writes:
> there would have to be some easy way of shifting the keyboard from one screen
> to another (maybe by numbered function keys, which I stubbornly refuse to use
> for editors etc.!)
> Surely someone else has thought of this.  Any experience?
> Mike Maxwell

My first exposure to this was Venix/86 for the PC.  If you had a
video card with sufficient memory, you could hit Alt-1 through Alt-4
to go to screens one through four, each of which was a separate device,
"login:" prompt and all.  I used one screen for normal work, one with
an editor, and one logged in as root.

One of the nicest ones I've seen is the windowing system in IC-DOS, a
UNIX-like system sold by Action Instruments to the industrial market.
You can have up to 10 windows, which can be sized from a few lines by
a few characters, to the full 24x80 lines.  The can have a border or
not, can have default colors assigned to them, etc.  You can have
several full-screen windows, similar to the Venix/86 scheme, plus
several smaller windows at various points on the screen, which will
pop up as needed.  It's a very complete system; I enjoy using it.
Window 0 is the full console screen, with no sub-windowing; this is
for programs that want to access screen memory directly (for PC-DOS
emulation, especially).  [Disclaimer: I am not unbiased, as I am
connected with the IC-DOS work.  Nonetheless, these are my personal
opinions.]

	John Owens @ General Electric Company	(+1 804 978 5726)
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