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From: dick@tjalk.UUCP (Dick Grune)
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re: emacs under flow control
Message-ID: <490@tjalk.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Jul-85 05:44:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: tjalk.490
Posted: Mon Jul  8 05:44:25 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Jul-85 04:48:02 EDT
References: <2899@cornell.UUCP> <466@bu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: dick@tjalk.UUCP (Dick Grune)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 25
Summary: Another Golden Rule

Modifying and adapting all existing programs to use ^\ for ^S on even
days and for ^Q on odd days is a finite job, but doing the same for all
incoming sources is a never-ending story.  And don't tell me programmers
should write their code to avoid the problem. Perhaps they should, but most
of them won't.  Many just know that a terminal is a 7-bit channel and have
never seen anything else.

It seems to me that the real problem lies with the 6.8-bit channel (ASCII-128
minus ^Q, ^S, ^P, ^T and ^@, or so).  So I propose another Golden Rule:

	If a channel preempts some characters, it should provide
	reasonable means to transmit these characters anyway.

In this case that could mean that any sequence typed as ^]X would arrive
as the right-most five bits of X.  For this to work, it should be in the
terminal driver, which is doing funny things with NL/CR already.

This is probably easier said than done, but it is a one-time finite job,
and will work for all programs to come.

					Dick Grune
					Vrije Universiteit
					de Boelelaan 1081
					1081 HV  Amsterdam
					the Netherlands