One terminal <==> many processes. How?

[jbuck at epimass.UUCP]

Someone wrote:
>>There is a window manager program called, appropriately enough, wm.
>>It allows you to interactively create a number of windows,  each of which
>>can contain a separate process.

In article <13319 at sun.uucp> guy at sun.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
>It also, most likely, does so using pseudo-ttys, which would have to
>be added to an S5-based system.

Nope.  I used to work with Rob Jacob at Naval Research Laboratory.
He produced at least four versions.  His first version ran under V6
(!)  and had the escape sequences for terminals wired in (termcap
hadn't been invented yet, or at least NRL didn't have it yet).  On
Regent 40 terminals (ugly, but we had a lot of them), the different
windows were different shades of grey (you could have four
intensities).  He converted it to run under termcap; this version
used nothing but pipes (like the first) and used two processes per
window (kind of like cu) plus the control process (unfortunately, the
termcap version doesn't support colored windows).  It wasn't
blindingly fast, but it was quite elegant.  Whoops, that's only three
versions.  I know there was a fourth.  

The best-known version does require pseudo-ttys and runs under 4.2bsd,
and it's faster than the pipes-and-termcap version, but the others
are also available.  Check out his Usenix paper; I forget what year.
1983, maybe.

Rob, are you out there?
-- 
- Joe Buck 	{hplabs,ihnp4,sun,ames}!oliveb!epimass!jbuck
  Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, California