26 Nov
2020
26 Nov
'20
6:37 p.m.
From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o"
was there anything that had similar functionality
which pre-dated Bill
Joy and termcap in late 70's?
Is your question purely in Unix, or more general?
If the latter, there's the terminal-independent support of video terminals in
ITS; that dates to the mid-1970's (i.e. circa V5 or so). User programs output
device-independent display control codes (I have this memory that they were
called P-Codes, but that could be my memory failing), and the OS translated
them to the appropriate screen-control characters.
One additional hack was that the number of terminal types supported in the OS
was limited; there was however a protocol called SUPDUP which sent (basically)
those device-independent codes over a remote login (originally over NCP) frm
the server machine to the client. The User SUPDUP client supported a lot more
terminal types; so people with odd-ball terminals used to log in, SUPDUP
_back_ to their machine, and away they went.
Noel
26 Nov
26 Nov
6:50 p.m.
New subject: Seeking wisdom from Unix Greybeards
RFC734
On Nov 26, 2020, at 10:38 AM, jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu
wrote:
From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o"
was there anything that had similar functionality
which pre-dated Bill
Joy and termcap in late 70's?
Is your question purely in Unix, or more general?
If the latter, there's the terminal-independent support of video terminals in
ITS; that dates to the mid-1970's (i.e. circa V5 or so). User programs output
device-independent display control codes (I have this memory that they were
called P-Codes, but that could be my memory failing), and the OS translated
them to the appropriate screen-control characters.
One additional hack was that the number of terminal types supported in the OS
was limited; there was however a protocol called SUPDUP which sent (basically)
those device-independent codes over a remote login (originally over NCP) frm
the server machine to the client. The User SUPDUP client supported a lot more
terminal types; so people with odd-ball terminals used to log in, SUPDUP
_back_ to their machine, and away they went.
Noel 
7:02 p.m.
New subject: Seeking wisdom from Unix Greybeards
Noel Chiappa wrote:
If the latter, there's the terminal-independent
support of video
terminals in ITS; that dates to the mid-1970's (i.e. circa V5 or
so). User programs output device-independent display control codes (I
have this memory that they were called P-Codes, but that could be my
memory failing), and the OS translated them to the appropriate
screen-control characters.
That's correct. Or ^P-codes, from the character that signalled a
control code. It would be interesting to figure out when they were
introduced. They were not present in 1972; at this point ITS only
supported printing terminals, Datapoints, and Imlacs.
WAITS allegedly had an even better abstration of terminal control codes.
One additional hack was that the number of terminal
types supported in
the OS was limited; there was however a protocol called SUPDUP which
sent (basically) those device-independent codes over a remote login
Basically, but another set of equivalent codes internal to ITS. SUPDUP
means super-duper image mode, which alludes to image mode.
(originally over NCP) frm the server machine to the
client. The User
SUPDUP client supported a lot more terminal types; so people with
odd-ball terminals used to log in, SUPDUP _back_ to their machine, and
away they went.
See also CRTSTY.
9:56 p.m.
New subject: Seeking wisdom from Unix Greybeards
Bakul Shah wrote in
<7DBB40AE-259D-494E-8ABF-2FE4D47F4052(a)iitbombay.org>rg>:
|RFC734
Interesting!
Off-topic, but i have downloaded this via
#!/bin/sh -
FROM=https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/
#FROM=https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/
MYDIR=/x/doc/coding/rfc
: ${WGET:=`command -v curl` --silent}
#: ${WGET:=`command -v wget` -q -O -}
##
cd "${MYDIR}" || {
echo >&2 'Cannot cd to '"${MYDIR}"
exit 21
}
xfiles= estat=0
while [ ${#} -gt 0 ]; do
RFC=${1}
shift
[ -f "rfc${RFC}.txt" ] && {
echo 'RFC '${RFC}': a local copy of this RFC yet exists'
continue
}
printf 'Fetching RFC %s.txt ... ' "${RFC}"
if ${WGET} "${FROM}"rfc${RFC}.txt > rfc${RFC}.txt; then
xfiles="${xfiles} rfc${RFC}.txt"
printf 'ok\n'
else
printf 'failed!\n'
estat=1
fi
done
if [ -n "${xfiles}" ]; then
"${EDITOR}" INDEX.txt ${xfiles}
fi
exit ${estat}
and the file is contaminated with NULs.
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
1241
days inactive
1241
days old
3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Bakul Shah -
jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu -
Lars Brinkhoff -
Steffen Nurpmeso