Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!zodiac!joyce!sri-unix!quintus!sun!gorodish!guy From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Input Line Editing Message-ID: <60146@sun.uucp> Date: 15 Jul 88 19:59:21 GMT References: <16456@brl-adm.ARPA> <9666@eddie.MIT.EDU> <59697@sun.uucp> <9685@eddie.MIT.EDU> Sender: news@sun.uucp Lines: 39 > The 256 character character font example was just for ease of > presenting the idea. It would work equally well if the terminal had > less characters. The unassigned pixel values would just not be used > in the (1 pixel by 1 pixel) X font (the same way conventional X fonts > don't use every possibly pixel combination). OK, so what happens when "xterm" tries to paint a scrollbar? > You don't. That's exactly the point. With a server implemented this > way, *millions* (tens of millions, etc.) of existing, > cursor-addressible, character-based terminals would instantly become > X-compatible. *SORT OF* X-compatible. Boatloads of X applications won't run worth a damn on them. > The whole point of this was not just to have multiple character > windows (although I don't see why this is such a bad way to get them). It's a bad way to get them because: 1) The other ways exist (e.g., 4.3BSD's "windows"), and this doesn't. Until somebody builds this mythical "X on dumb terminals" server, I won't believe it's necessarily even *possible*. 2) It's a lot more work than doing something like "windows", and if only a tiny number of X programs will run under it, it's not clear the extra work is worth it. > It was to have a consistent interface to the input and output devices. > > With a character-based X server, all interactive programs could be > written using X facilities. Xterm would no longer be needed, except > as a compatibility tool. Termcap would no longer be needed, except as > a configuration language for the character-based X server. Again, if by "consistent interface" you just mean an interface that doesn't require programs to know about N different kinds of terminals, something like "windows" gets you this; it emulates a "standard" sort of terminal.