Where Goeth the Line-editing?

[Dave Shepperd]

>From article <7564 at cbmvax.UUCP>, by ag at cbmvax.UUCP (Keith Gabryelski):
> 
> We actually just wrote a line discipline that emulates the TOPS-20
> line discipline for our SYSV3.2 port to the Amiga (echoing only when
> input was read), ^O, ^V, ^W, and no backspacing over your prompt.
> 
> I was going to add history and real command line editting, but finally
> came to my senses that the kernel was just not the place for such a
> user-configurable/messy thing.
> 	

I agree that putting the editor in kernel code is ugly, however,
since there doesn't seem to be any better way to do it without
bringing the system to its knees, and IMHO line editing is
absolutely required, it has to be there. Until somebody cooks
up something better (like everybody starts using STREAMS),
I'm going to keep using my kernel code line editor.

> The best suggestion I've heard is a daemon the user runs that gets
> handed each character the user types and deals with them
> and the canon buffer appropriately.
> 

Don't forget that the daemon would have to get all the output
text too. During development of my discipline I noticed that
many utilities do single character output to the terminal.
I believe the poor system would really slow down if all 
terminal I/O had to be routed through another usermode task.

-- 
Dave Shepperd.	    shepperd at dms.UUCP or motcsd!dms!shepperd
Atari Games Corporation, 675 Sycamore Drive, Milpitas CA 95035.
(Arcade Video Game Manufacturer, NOT Atari Corp. ST manufacturer).