UNIX Futures

[Henry Spencer]

> >A program cannot catch '^Z'. This implies that 'vi' doesn't redraw its
> >screen.
> 
> 	When this is fixed I will admit that shell layers are a
> workable substitute for full job control! What good does it do to stop
> a job if I cannot restart it transparently?

What good does it do to be able to stop and start jobs if every program
has to know about it to redraw the screen?  Also, what do you do about
output from (say) grep, which prints output and terminates rather than
sticking around to redraw the screen on request?

The fact is, *both* job control and shell layers are brain-damaged.  Both
do the easy part of multiplexing -- centralized input administration --
without the hard part -- centralized output administration.  Programs should
not have to redraw the screen themselves, when they have done nothing to
mess it up!  Job control and shell layers are both cheap plastic imitations
of real window systems.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry