[MUD-Dev] (fwd) Re: Issues from the digests and Wout's list

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <Pine.LNX.3.91.970510173041.32099P-100000 at chimera.massey.ac.nz>, on
05/09/97 
   at 10:47 PM, Oliver Jowett <oliver at sa-search.massey.ac.nz> said:

>On Fri, 9 May 1997 clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

>> Yup, thus I currently have the <ENTER> abort any incompleat commands,
>> with a clear visual signal on the screen that there is an incompleat
>> command.

>You might want to avoid using enter for this. I use enter as a
>'redraw my current state' no-op, for when my connection starts
>lagging or if the terminal emulation goes ape - I don't know if
>others also do this, but having (no real input) actually change the
>state of your connection seems a bit counter-intuitive to me. 

Yeah, I chose <ENTER> here for the simple reason that its the command
key (as distinguished from a normal alphanumeric key) mostly easily
located and hit by a user in haste.  I feel that the fact that it
changes state to be an acceptable side-effect as all that is needed to
ressurect the state is to re-issue the last command.

An easy comparison here are things like VMS'es cascaded help system
(some of you may be familiar with it).  It goes something like this:

  > help
  ...list of all the top-level topics the system has help 
  on dislayed...
  help> topic
  ...help on topic displayed...
  help>topic> -c          // -c is a command line switch to topic_name
  ... help on command line switch displayed...
  help>topic>-c> xxx
  ...help on xxx capability of -c switch displayed...
  help>topic>-c>xxc>

Then hitting <ENTER> on a blank entry just exits out to the next layer

  help>topic>-c>xxc>  <ENTER>
  help>topic>-c> <ENTER>
  help>topic> <ETNER>
  help> <ENTER>
  >

With of course the full abaility to start going down the tree again
from any level.

>Systems
>that close connection if you hit enter at the login screen bug me for
>this reason. 

Agreed.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
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