Re: the glass tty model of human-computer interaction

["Ann K. Parsons" <akp@eznet.net>]

Hi all,

IMHO, it depends on what you're doing.  If I'm going to write a long
document, like a report, then a full screen editor is what I want because
you can move about easier within it. You can go to certain pages instead of
lines and so on.

If, on the other hand, I'm writing something short, or if I am programming
in MOO, or looking for errors in a program in MOO that I have written, then
a line editor is much easier to use.

I guess what I am saying is that IMHO, it depends on why you're using the
editor.

Ann P.
At 09:55 PM 12/13/98 -0800, Richard Uhtenwoldt wrote:
>I'm not blind, just interested in making my software blind friendly.
>
>In the Seventies before the personal computer became popular a lot of
>interaction with computers occured via the so-called hardcopy terminal,
>like the DECwriter and the Teletype Model 33 before that, which is
>essentially a keyboard connected to a printer.  at the end of the session,
>you have a long piece of paper that is essentially a transcript of
>everything you wrote and everything the computer wrote in reply.
>
>there was also the dumb terminal, also called the glass tty, which differed
>from a vt100 in that its cursor was not addressible.  the only way the
>computer could update a glass tty was by writing a line of text at the
>bottom of the screen and having whatever was on the screen scroll up one
>line.  cursor-addressible terminals were also called smart terminals.  now
>we may laugh at the idea, but in the Seventies a smart terminal cost
>thousands of dollars, hence the market for dumb terminals as a lower-cost
>solution.
>
>you could not use vi or Emacs on a hardcopy terminal or a glass tty.  what
>you used instead was what I will call a "line editor" which had commands
>like "delete the next 5 lines" and "print the next 5 lines".  the Unix
>command "ed" and I think also "ex" are line editors.  sighted users came to
>prefer so-called visual editors like vi and Emacs in which most of the
>display is devoted to an alway-up-to-date view of the thing being edited.
>it occurs to me, tho, that if I were a blind user using text-to-speech
>hardware or a braille output device, I would prefer a line editor.  but the
>Linux Access Howto mentions Emacspeak but does not mention any line
>editors.
>
>so, if you are blind and have used a line editor, please tell me whether
>you prefer line editors or visual editors.
>
>
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