Re: x86 serial support

[Omniflux <omniflux+lists@omniflux.com>]

Marco Gerards wrote:

>>>BTW, do you have any suggestion about the so-called "dumb terminal"? 
>>
>>The only thing I can think of is to disable the menu and replace clear
>>screen with a newline, which is what Legacy does IIRC.
> 
> Why can't we use a menu?  Is it really that slow to update the menu
> over a serial console?

This is a communication problem caused by the fact that dumb terminal 
does not have a universally accepted definition. In this case, we are 
talking about a terminal without cursor control, such as a glass tty or 
teletype.

The following paragraph can be ignored if the above clarifies the issue. 
It contains examples for anyone else.

To implement a menu for this terminal would entail redrawing the screen 
each time something must be changed. This could be incredibly slow as 
many of these terminals have speeds of less then 110 bps. This also 
leaves the problem of marking the current menu selection, as we cannot 
use either color or reverse video. We would also be unable to reposition 
the cursor to (0,0) for the redraw, because we cannot be sure of the 
display size and thus the number of newlines which must be sent to move 
a line of text to that position. If the terminal is actually a display 
on paper terminal, we also have the problem of the waste of paper 
redisplaying the screen would create.

Why anyone would now be using such a terminal I do not know, but if we 
do not mention the proper way to use such a terminal, or not to use such 
a terminal at all, I'm sure someone will try it.

-- 
Omniflux