9 Mar
2006
9 Mar
'06
12:54 p.m.
> > > Of course, now my problem is that the
console is presumed to be a TTY and
> > > not a CRT terminal. And so, man pages just scroll right up and off the
> > > screen. Oh well. I'm sure I'll figure out something. Eventually.
Kernighan and Pike's book `The Unix Programming Environment' has a
program called `p' that was used in the labs when screens became
faster.
> > In V7, everything was a dumb terminal:
termcap and curses did not exist
> > yet. And you were expected to have a paper-based terminal too :)
By 1978 glass ttys were very much in use. The advent of the
microprocessor made smart terminals affordable.
I would suggest that you play with V7 without the Berkeley stuff. It
will add to your experience. You'll be surprised by the productivity
and usefulness of a system that doesn't move the cursor. From 1982
until 1992 I used ed(1) almost exclusively. In the Seventh Edition
you can see the true beauty of the tools approach without them being
obscured by foreign influences.
The whole idea of running these systems, seems to me, id getting the
real experience of living with them. The V7 experience is a wonderful
one. As you explore the system, you'll see ways to do things
elegantly where other systems have added lots of ornimates that
obscure. To get a real feel, run it as most did.
If you want to expericne BSD, then load BSD.