Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!yale!husc6!bu-cs!bzs From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Input Line Editing (Really: X on the KSR-33) Message-ID: <23857@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: 14 Jul 88 16:33:05 GMT References: <16456@brl-adm.ARPA> <9666@eddie.MIT.EDU> <59697@sun.uucp> <9675@eddie.MIT.EDU> <59886@sun.uucp> Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci. Lines: 31 In-reply-to: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM's message of 14 Jul 88 09:54:33 GMT These cries for an X-server for dumb terminals remind me a lot of the days when people always screamed if some screen-oriented program didn't have some mode for people on paper terminals, back then most or many people used paper terminals and CRTs were these rather rare, expensive beasts. It was considered pretty arrogant to write programs which only worked on glass ttys (I got in some trouble at Harvard for doing that once, until I pointed out that we didn't have any paper ttys in the lab the software was designed for, people were still uneasy that we "might" someday...?!) Somehow, it got worked out, and few true screen programs ever really managed to provide much support for paper (although some editors had a limited mode for this, EMACS in paper-tty mode was interesting...) I think the designs will have to assume bit addressable terminals of reasonable resolution and the market will solve the rest of the problem (as it already is doing rapidly.) Like supporting old hardware in general, the day simply comes when you have to pay a lot of $$$ to have your "cheap" hardware supported, there's no other way (other than accepting no support), you won't get creative people terribly interested in writing X servers for KSR-33's, tho you might be able to pay one enough to think about it, false economy I suspect, unless you do succeed in convincing someone to provide a few tens of thousands of dollars of programming for free by screaming loud enough. -Barry Shein, Boston University The future just isn't what it used to be...