Character echo at read time

Eirik Fuller eirik at tekcrl.TEK.COM
Tue Sep 6 01:30:06 AEST 1988


All this talk about how to properly jumble input and output an a tty
device reminds me of a rather obvious fact:  on a tty device, input
and output get jumbled.  Actually, with some shells you'll see your
input twice, once while the shell has temporarily reverted to echo
mode, and again when it cleans up (I am thinking in particular of tcsh).
I think the (gag, retch) Puniflex shell does something similar ...

This reminder gives me a sudden urge to hack xterm so that there is a
separate row (something like a status line) in which typeahead gets
echoed as it's typed.  But, if I wait long enough, this urge will pass.
Besides, a vague memory tells me Apollo thought of this already, or
something like it anyway.

The point, if there is one, is that windowing systems could, in
principle, eliminate such arguments about increasingly-but-never-quite
obsolete things like terminals.



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