The TTY demystified (2008) • Hacker News Board

Re: The TTY demystified (2008)

#31

Post by na85 » Sun, Aug 16, 2015, 5:03 AM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #13

Fantastic! This comes at a good time for me -- I'm getting interested in TTY emulation. Currently on a learn-Emacs kick. Every couple of years I start using it then back off due to general cruftiness. However, it is undeniably featurefull, and the idea of just learning one last editor rather than a bunch of half-baked ones is appealing. What about embedding Emacs, through a TTY interface in whatever new fancy cool TM…

I got by for years only knowing how to open files, save them to disk, change buffers, and close the program.

Re: The TTY demystified (2008)

#32

Post by digi_owl » Sun, Aug 16, 2015, 9:09 AM UTC

leaveyou wrote: post #25

jefurii wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you worry that all kinds of devices around you are using old technology like wires, resistors, diodes, and other such?

I would be quite affected if I opened my desktop and noticed some bulky components using vacuum tubes mixed in only for compatibility with some historic peripheral my grandpa used in his twenties.

Is that not mixing implementation and specification?

Re: The TTY demystified (2008)

#33

Post by leaveyou » Sun, Aug 16, 2015, 7:08 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #29

leaveyou wrote: post #5

I have read this with interest but the obsessive compulsive developer inside me keeps bothering me with questions like "isn't it worrying/depressing that today's best OS & applications are stuck with interfaces modeled with messy, leaky or no abstraction at all after devices used more than 100 years ago with no opportunity for radical improvement in sight ?". Sometimes I have the feeling that in software we are build…

An interface being used for over 100 years is hardly an argument that it's a bad interface. The opposite, really. Can you give more of a concrete reason or example why something is wrong with TTY other than "messy/leaky abstraction"?

I wish to be able to write this: screen.print("text"); and when VGA displays are invented: screen.print(someImageBuffer); and when 3D accelerators appear: screen.print(some3Dshape); And it should just work.