From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people
Newsgroups: fa.editor-p
Title: Re: EDIT/TOPS-20
Article-I.D.: ucb.1251
Posted: Thu Jun  3 01:56:14 1982
Received: Fri Jun  4 03:47:26 1982

>From Mishkin@YALE Thu Jun  3 01:53:00 1982
[Editor's note:  with the consent of the authors, I am trying an
  experiment of publishing related messages together as a single one.
  Let me know if you like this scheme:  perhaps in future we'll experiment
  with a debate format like that used in Behavioral & Brain Sciences. ]

         (2) Reimplement EMACS (again, I don't care how it's done).
    Understand about paging considerations.  Understand about other
    architectural things like on the Jupiter it will be much faster
    to do:
        ...test...
	 TRNA
          JRST FOO
        ...code...

I don't mean to be persnickity or anything, but is this kind of thing going
to make a big difference in view of the fact that god knows how many
instructions are executed when you call a JSYS?

    In particular, a reimplementation of EMACS should recognize that
    NUL, ESC, XON and XOFF can no longer be considered available
    characters if it is to reach the widest possible audience.  As
    much as we might dislike XON/XOFF flow control, the word is that
    in a few years it may be very hard to find a new terminal that
    doesn't use it.

I don't want to overestimate our influence but aren't WE the people these
XON/XOFF terminal manufacturers are selling their wares to?  I mean, if we
don't like it, let's bitch not acquiesce; don't buy their terminals.  I don't
know much about terminal hardware, but isn't XON/XOFF a wimpout solution.
Why do some terminals need it and some not?
  -------
Date: 29 May 1982 1434-PDT
From: ADMIN.MRC at SU-SCORE
Subject: Re: EDIT/TOPS-20
In-Reply-To: Your message of 29-May-82 1317-PDT

     The research community really does not have that much influence with
terminal manufacturers.  It may well be in a few years you won't be able
to buy a terminal which does not have XON/XOFF.  All of my conversations
with terminal manufacturers seems to indicate that that will be the
tendency.

     A lot of the TOPS-20 jsi are being rewritten to do if/else type
stuff in an efficient way for the Jupiter.  If EMACS did I/O in an
efficient manner (just doing output buffering and using TEXTI, not
drastic changes in EMACS' user interface), it probably wouldn't be very
JSYS-intensive.

-- Mark --
-------
Date:    31-May-82 8:57PM-EDT (Mon)
From:    Nathaniel Mishkin 
Subject: Re: EDIT/TOPS-20

The XON/XOFF stuff seems like a loss and it seems too bad that we can't do
anything about it.  Perhaps someone else knows the issues and tradeoffs of
the terminal design.

		-- Nat
-------