Asri-unix.462 net.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!trujillo@LBL-UNIX Thu Jan 7 23:13:35 1982 Re: UNIX System III and 'cpio' From: trujillo at LBL-UNIX (Gary S. Trujillo) Maybe the reason that System III tapes come from Western in cpio format is (as per a rumor I heard from a reputable source) that System III is really a derivative of PWB. I would like to stimulate some discussion about the possible implications for the future evolution of UNIX brought about by the introduction of a version thereof which may, in a number of ways, be non-upwardly-compatible with Version 7. One area of non-compatibility, as I understand it, is that various bits returned by ioctl() have significantly different meanings in the two systems, and that the tty drivers bear little resemblence to one another. Further, there is something about cbreak mode not working quite right under Sys III. At least as important as the above, though somewhat related, I imagine, is the fact that the good people at Berkeley (Bill Joy, et. al.) have no intention of backtracking to get compatible with System III, so that we can expect future releases of their stuff to be based on the v7 and 32v systems they started with. The VAX version of System III does not do paging, though I understand they're working on it. It seems possible that the Berkeley folks have a sufficiently great head start, though, that the Western Electric offering may be inferior for quite some time. Though there appears to be a screen editor in the works which will presumably be released with some future incarnation of System III vintage, it does not promise to have the functionality of the Berkeley editor. (I know that the question of editors is a religious question, and I am only stating my particular preference. However, the generalized scheme of terminal-independent screen handling provided by /etc/termcap cannot, I feel, be so easily dismissed as religion.) There is much more that can be said on the subject. I do realize that some of what is being provided in System III is good stuff, particularly SCCS (further evidence for the SysIII/PWB connection). I only feel that people should not get stuck with a "pig-in-a-poke" if it can possibly be helped. Gary Trujillo ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.