autowrap

der Mouse mouse at mcgill-vision.UUCP
Sun Sep 11 20:31:47 AEST 1988


In article <3854 at bsu-cs.UUCP>, dhesi at bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
> In article <8437 at smoke.ARPA> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>> (At present we also don't emulate line wrap for terminals that lack
>> it, because we don't want the shell to have to depend on termcap.)
> May I recommend that you, and other designers, do so, please.  There
> is no need to backspace across screen lines, but when normally
> sending output to the terminal, autowrap emulation would be useful.

1) Please don't, ever, do :am:bw@:.  This is seriously brain-damaged
   behavior, and if Sun hadn't done it I wouldn't have quite believed
   anyone would be crazy enough to.  (It's fine if am and bw are
   independently configurable and the user explicitly asks for it, of
   course.)

2) I think BRL is right to keep the shell independent of the terminal
   type and everything that depends on it.

> We have users here who use both VMS and UNIX from the same terminals.
> Terminal settings that work for VMS (e.g. no autowrap) ought not to
> stop working for UNIX, since it's commonly known that UNIX is so much
> more flexible than VMS.

And what does VMS do to avoid "wrapping" in the middle of an escape
sequence?  Or does the tty driver track the terminal type and parse all
the escape sequences?  Where does it keep its database of escape
sequences?  Oh yes, that's right, if it's not a DEC brand we don't care
what happens to it.

Use something on UNIX which sits between the real tty and whatever's
running and provides whatever features you want.  (Can screen do this?
I don't know, never having played with it.)

					der Mouse

			old: mcgill-vision!mouse
			new: mouse at larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu



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