AT&T Joining OSF

[Tim Chase]

In article <381 at infmx.UUCP> aland at infmx.UUCP (Dr. Scump) writes:
>The thing I *really* can't get used to: having every character I type
>(in raw mode applications, anyway) cause an interrupt, instead of being
>able to key in a screen worth before bothering the host system...

Simple, just throw a bit of hardware at it in the form of an intelligent
I/O processor and many of those interrupts can become a distant memory.
It doesn't seem as if every system needs one, though they are readily available
in the PC Unix market.

Hopefully this wasn't an implication that interrupt-per-character is an
intrinsic feature of Unix.  If, however,  a process really wants to see every
character as it is typed, I don't see how this interrupt can be avoided.

Oh yeah, don't you think those "raw mode applications" are have a superior
user interface to that of your block-mode terminal?  If they don't, at
least you can change the programs.  If you don't like your block-mode
terminal's editing features, you're out of luck.

In summary, I think that having the ability to use a "raw" mode allows
more friendly, interactive programs to be written and to be run on
a wider range of hardware.


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