windows on normal terminals

[michael maxwell]

In article <395 at dg_rtp.UUCP> throopw at dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) writes:
>> keppel at pavepaws.UUCP (:-D avid  K eppel)
>> [...]
>>         In a few years most new terminals will probably be high-
>>     performance, micros w/ high-resolution bitmap graphics and built-in
>>     windowing OS software.  Why fool with this obsolete 24-line stuff?
>
>Two reasons.  First, I am developing software now, not "a few years"
>from now.  Second, the terminal that my employer sees fit to provide for
>me is an "obsolete 24-line" terminal, despite my preference for a $100K
>workstation.  I can't understand why an $n-hundred terminal and 1/mth of
>a $100K machine should strike my employer as any more economical than a
>$100K machine for each employee(*)...

If I understand correctly, part of the reason that large bit-mapped screens
(like the Sun I'm priveleged to be typing on now) are so expensive is the cost
of producing a CRT w/ the requisite resolution; the memory for each pixel is
presumably less of a problem these days (?).  It's always seemed to me that
there must be a way of setting up a number of 80x24 CRTs to have at least 
some of the advantages of the multiple (8 1/2) screens I have on my Sun right 
now.  Sure, you couldn't have a single large screen w/ 200 columns x 100 lines, 
but you could at least have multiple editor windows (each larger than 1/8th of 
a 80x24 screen), a screen dedicated to a running program that you're debugging,
etc., and file transfer between them.  Just giving one user multiple terminals
is not sufficient, because he would probably rather not have 8 keyboards; so
there would have to be some easy way of shifting the keyboard from one screen
to another (maybe by numbered function keys, which I stubbornly refuse to use
for editors etc.!)
Surely someone else has thought of this.  Any experience?
-- 
Mike Maxwell
Boeing Artificial Intelligence Center
	...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!michaelm