Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!vector!rpp386!pigs!haugj
From: haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Input Line Editing In the Kernel
Summary: expands the kernel to fill all available memory
Message-ID: <249@pigs.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jul 88 16:17:22 GMT
References: <16456@brl-adm.ARPA> <9666@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie)
Organization: Big "D" Oil and Gas
Lines: 23

[ In a previous article Doug Alan expounded on the virtues of kernel support
  for input line editting and virtual terminal output. ]

this is possible where the number of terminals which are supported is
limited to some subset.  a unix system may have any number of different
terminals with their different methods of handling features connected.

the only microcomputer operating system i've seen which had a virtual
screen was the p-system.  it handled screen updates by homing and
redrawing the entire screen.  ibm's (and others) large machine operating
systems can afford to redraw the screen since terminal i/o is so damned
fast (for non-serial devices, such as coax).

for the typical unix system with it's hudge-podge of devices and slow
serial i/o, i don't believe virtual terminal support really belongs
in the kernel.

- john.
-- 
 John "Evil USENET User" F. Haugh II          HECI Exploration Co, Inc., Dallas
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