>Also the scrolling (non-wrapping) line editor sucks big time.

Hey, I wrote that :-) It used to work well 10 years ago...
I've noticed a couple of bugs creep back in over the years,
and I recently fixed one that has anoyed me ever since 5.1 or so.
echo $HOME/tm<ESC><ESC> would expand the line but put the cursor one
char past end of line and not expand the last word correctly.
This should be fixed in 1.6 fwiw.

>Also the lack of a .kshrc file or whatever forces you to put ksh
>specific stuff in .profile or $ENV and ifdef it out which doesnt
>always work.

Its unfortunate that both sh and ksh use $ENV. Put

if [ x$RANDOM != x$RANDOM ]; then
fi

around ksh stuff that sh would choke on.  I install a standard
/etc/profile and /etc/ksh.kshrc on my boxes.  /etc/profile will
set ENV=/etc/ksh.kshrc if no ~/.kshrc exists.
I find this works well.

>Does it make any sense to file a PR? (because pd ksh is "external?)

Probably wouldn't hurt.

>Are there any chances that our ksh will be enhanced one day?

In ksh compatible ways or some other way?  I like pd-ksh because
in my daily use, I generally can't tell the difference b/w it
and ksh88.

>Is PD KSH still maintained? The copyright suggests its from '99?

I set a patch to the current maintainer back in Jan, he was still
there and responding.  I handed maintenance of pd-ksh over to
Michael Rendell <michael@cs.mun.ca> years ago because he was more 
actively working on it - and doing good things, and because I
no longer had time to devote to it.  Its possible that Michael's
hand enough too.  You could fix a bunch of these "bugs" and send
him the patches.  You never know, he might ask you to take over
as maintainer.

Thanks
--sjg