Original background information behind the SCREEN question

[edgar <edg...@we...>]

Original background information behind the SCREEN question:

I work here with some programmers who cannot read or write english language,
that's why we use localized CLISP versions with german error messages.

Many of these programmers have worked in former times with machines like
Commodore C-64 or MS-DOS computers, that's why they are not afraid to type
letters into terminal windows.  :)

We wanted to use the SCREEN package to implement things like funny stoneage
terminal games (e.g. the CLX package contains a Sokoban game that could be
re-implemented via SCREEN), so I only wanted to tell that there's no deeper
need from our side to over-perfectionize the SCREEN package.

Example:

On c.l.l., I reported a few other problems which turned out to be:

* terminal-dependent (xterm vs. rxvt vs. ...)
* shell-dependent (bash vs. csh vs. zsh vs. ...)
* any combination of terminal/shell/readline dependent ...

... and so on ...

If you really want to fix all these issues (where first of all the issues of
xterm, rxvt, bash, csh, zsh and readline programs and libraries themselves
and their interaction should be fixed), then this will be a tremendous
amount of work and probably will last the next ten or twenty years.

Writing an Emacs or Hemlock like editor via SCREEN would be even more work.

My original intention was trying to use the SCREEN package together with
EXT:*KEYBOARD-INPUT* in practical programming to find out if there are
problems left that cannot be solved from the Lisp level and only if there
is a really urgent need to fix something on the C level, then to ask on
the CLISP lists.

I do not have problems if you want to improve the SCREEN package, but
I do not think that it makes much sense to put too much work into this,
because there probably are only a very few users.

Thanks to Sam Steingold for fixing the SCREEN:WINDOW-SIZE function, I will
try to test what happens on Windows later on tonight at work.

- edgar






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