Aucbvax.5896
fa.info-vax
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!info-vax
Thu Jan 21 16:50:54 1982
Terminal drivers on Unix and VMS
>From decvax!duke!bcw@Berkeley Thu Jan 21 16:45:14 1982
This is in response to Terry Laskodi (ucbvax!teklabs!terryl)
discussing terminal drivers on VMS and Unix. There are several
errors of fact in that article which I would like to correct:
1) It is possible to change one's mode on VMS so that special
characters are not processed. It is also possible to turn
off character echo, without special privilege. It does
require special privileges to be able to set terminal
characteristics permanently so that all future users of
the terminal will get those characteristics forever and
ever amen. This seems like a reasonable restriction.
2) Although it isn't possible to change the meta-characters
on VMS, it isn't always possible to do this under Unix
either: the \ character is an example. This character
can be extremely annoying, as there are times when it
would be nice for the escape mechanism to go away so that
it can be used as a normal character.
3) The choice of turning form feeds into line feeds is not a
bad choice -- the number is computed from the page size of
the terminal and is done for the benefit of hardcopy output
terminals. You at least want the ability to turn form feed
characters into something innocuous: many terminals use a
single form-feed character to mean screen clear.
4) I'm not sure that you want a terminal driver which just
dumps characters, even control characters, from the keyboard
into a file. At least there should be a way to turn this
off -- it can be extremely annoying. I have spent a lot of
time on an OS (which shall go nameless, but I'm not thinking
of Unix) which did just that, and when you tried to compile
something you'd get lots of compilation errors ... and the
offending characters were turned iwto ?'s. Getting rid of
them can be a real headache. On the terminal which I had to
use, generating extraneous control characters was just about
the easiest thing in the world.
As far as terminal drivers go, I don't see much real difference
between Unix and VMS. Both have some minor glitches and some
minor advantages, but both are much nicer to use than a lot of
software I've met.
Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University
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