why Unix?

[Adam D. Ruppe]

On Mon, Apr 06, 2009 at 10:29:57PM -0400, Christopher Wright wrote:
> The Windows terminal emulator sucks. This is not subject to debate.

What terminal emulator?

This might be a bit of a nitpick, but Windows doesn't try to emulate a
terminal (not in the OS anyway; there are hundreds of third party programs
to do such) and it is better off for it.

Unix hurls chunks for the actual terminal system. The programs are pretty
decent, but the terminal itself - TERRIBLE.

Tried to write an interactive program that makes full use of the keyboard
and mouse? You can't get the shift key's state. It is a whole todo just
to get the arrow keys. You can't depend on the escape key. You can't
output data and expect it to be reliable (you have to depend on an environment
variable to figure out what you're writing to and it often isn't accurate!)

It gets worse as a user.

Have you ever pressed delete and just got a ~? Pressed home and got a ~[B
(or whatever the hell it is)? Tried to use a program with color after
changing the background color of your window? Resized a window and had
your text cut off? Go up through your history and get corrupted lines?


The Unix terminal system is barely usable - NOT something anyone should ever
try to emulate.

The Windows console, on the other hand, is a lot better, though still has its
warts. At least it is predictable though.

-- 
Adam D. Ruppe
http://arsdnet.net