why Unix?

[Alexander Pánek]

Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> 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.

I am sincerely puzzled. Do you know vim? It's a console program. It 
sports all of what you're describing as impossible (ncurses says hi!).

Have you ever tried to resize your cmd.exe window on Windows? It's funny 
since you can only really resize its height with the mouse. Have you 
ever tried to copy & paste multiple lines *not* as x*y block of 
characters including whitespace (aka hardcopy), but as multiple lines of 
text as you would expect it, even though a few might be wrapped? Good 
luck on that. Tried pasting? Tried... using a proper editor inside 
cmd.exe? Screen? dvtm? An IRC client? A mail client? Proper tab 
completion of segments of your argument, not the whole argument?

cmd.exe is a severe pain in the ass compared to ANY terminal emulator 
you would find on any Unix. Even xterm on any Linux or Terminal on OS X 
work way better.

Kind regards, Alex

P.S.: No offense intended, I'm just really puzzled. Srsly.