Aucb.732
fa.editor-p
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people
Thu Mar 18 09:18:37 1982
Trailing Newlines
>From Greenberg.Symbolics@MIT-MULTICS Thu Mar 18 09:15:20 1982
On the Teleterm 1040 "MULTICS" [sic] terminal, a device particularly
ill-suited for use with that operating system, is a parity-detect light
which goes on when a bad character is received. The terminal wiill then
wedge, and there is nothing you can do, or more significantly, ever DO
do, than open the top panel, and press this "communication error reset"
button, which promptly restores normalcy. Several people have suggested
the light be replaced by an arm which opens up the cover and presses
the button.
Beating this horse once more, TYMNET's autospeed detect lines did
(probably still do) type out "PLEASE TYPE LOGIN IDENTIFIER". If you
type anything but a lower-case a, from certain terminals, it says
(under circumstances I will never understand) "PLEASE DIAL UP AGAIN
AND TYPE a".
The point of this is that it's silly for an editor to say
"please go to the end of the buffer and type newline". What could you ever
possibly do except that, when it says "your buffer doesnt end in a newline?".
It should do it itself. Trying to explain the rational for this behavior,
let alone the execution, to computer-semi-illiterates, is undesirable.
For those who are using Emacs to edit object files, etc, and MUST NOT
HAVE THE TRAILING NL (of course, my remarks are ONLY relevant to systems
where trailing NL's are a fetish), use a special command or mode that
defines flags such that that is the case.
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