*BSD News Article 4659


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!kithrup!sef
From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
Subject: Re: AT&T Long Distance Boycott (was: BNR2SS, Mach, and The Lawsuit)
Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 1992 08:54:37 GMT
Message-ID: <1992Sep08.085437.419@kithrup.COM>
References: <2R1JJPG@taronga.com> <1992Sep07.101851.2123@kithrup.COM> <QA2J6LM@taronga.com>
Lines: 40

In article <QA2J6LM@taronga.com> peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>Sorry, if you have to provide your own termcap you're back where you started:

Sorry, if you have to provide your own main() your language is useless.

Sorry, if you have to provide your own fp-to-base-37 routines your language
is useless.

Sorry, if you have to provide your own custom IO routines, your language is
useless.

Etc.

The termcap library is *SMALL*.  It's better if it's on every system, but
it's small enough that it can be provided as part of your application and
not be terribly visible.  Emacs does that, or did at one point (although
emacs is not something I like using as an example).

>(You forgot that TRN needs a working bourne shell for Pnews and Rnmail, and
>Pnews and Rnmail need a sendmail/rmail compatible mail program... better
>add smail and one of the sh clones to this trn package, then you need to
>add all the stuff that *they* need. By itself 1003.1 is pointless.)

1.  Pnews and Rnmail work quite well with 1003.2 utilities.  Or did you
forget that the POSIX system is a *SYSTEM* -- in general, most programs will
deal with .1 and .2 and be reasonably complete.

2.  Pnews can easily be incorporated into *rn.  No real reason it's not,
except that it can be customized without recompiling the sources.

3.  As for mail, tell you what, Peter:  why don't you come up with a mail
system (reader, sender, interface, system-to-system interface, file format,
filesystem layout, etc.) that can work on all systems, and then I'll add the
code to t?rn to support that.

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "You can't get lost in one room, no matter how
sef@kithrup.COM  |  little effort you make to learn your way around."
-----------------+    -- William E Davidsen (william@crd.GE.COM)
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.