Questions about NeWS

[Mike Cohen]

Here is a question re NeWs.  I would like to write a simple
interface which took a sgimenu item placed you on a line in the window
menu and queried for a response.  Using the data for from this response
is started up another program.  What I have in mind is a menu item for
edge which would request the name of the program to be debugged then
did a {(edge <programname>) forkunix}.  All the ways I see to do this
involve reasonable involved programming for such a simple request.
(Like setting up an event handler for each character which is silly
for such a simple task).  I guess I have in mind something like an X11 widget.
If such is not available as a Litemenu or SGIMENU or Toolchest method it
ought to be.

With this in mind I'd like to report some bugs:

1.  Any killing of the console window by an external process
    (after /etc/gl/startconsole, makes reconnection of the console
    impossible via restart.  What happens is one gets a console window
    connected to device ? instead of /dev/console.

2.  psh
    executive
    console 80 string readline

Running a postscript shell which has such a code in it hangs in the
readline echoing what it reads intermidably.

3.  Starting edge from a postscript shell i.e.

(edge) { (getenv EDGE) (edge ) exch append forkunix }

in a menu entry or in psh produces an edge window which doesn't
type out <CRLF> to the created window.  The terminal settings
are quite wierd.  A dump is available on request.  I can see know
way of resetting the terminal properly I tried a (stty correct settings)
forkunix.  But this didn't work.

I'm sure this is not all that difficult.  I'm a fan of NeWS, my feeling
about it is NeWS/X11 as EMACS/TECO.  But the available NeWS docs
except perhaps for the Sun ones are not terribly clear.  In regard to
Gosling's book, I find it quite useful, but elementary.  Is the Sun
NewS documentation any better than 4sight docs I have?  The docs
contain a useful set of implimented codes.  But both demos and docs
are woefully short on the type of example I would like to see, i.e.
programming NeWS efficiently to interact with the rest of the operating
system.
                           -mike