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From: so@brownie.cs.wisc.edu (Bryan S. So)
Subject: Re: Windows in ASCII
Message-ID: <1993Nov7.224515.29803@cs.wisc.edu>
Sender: news@cs.wisc.edu (The News)
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Madison -- Computer Sciences Dept.
References: <1993Nov5.083938.17756@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
 <1993Nov5.100152.616@crosfield.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1993 22:45:15 GMT
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In article <1993Nov5.100152.616@crosfield.co.uk> rak@crosfield.co.uk (Richard Kirk) writes:
: I agree with the last posting.  There are many DOS packages that manage
: windows/mouse gui with the standard PC character set and those work well.
: It would be easily possible to come up with a good gui for a terminal that
: could manage highlighted and reversed text, and even an adequate one for
: a terminal that could only do the bare ASCII minimum.
: 
: ... deleted

  I was interested in these packages for DOS you mentioned a 
  while ago.  I have examined most of the public domain ones
  and many commercial products.  

  ALL of them lack one or both of the following features that I
  consider essential:

  . writing characters to a background window without first
    popping that window up to the front.

    - essential for multitasking applications.

  . moving a window partly off the screen.  for example, I'll
    send this command: window_move_right(window4, 30), which 
    moves a window to the right 30 units.  If the right border
    of that window is currently less than 30 units from the
    edge of the screen, I'd like it to go partly off right 
    part of the screen.  

    - essential for virtual desktop applications.

  That was about a year ago, and I am not confident there is
  any to date.
                                                             

   ______  ____________________                                     _      
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