/bin/sh for interactive use?

["Ian D. Leroux" <idleroux%fastmail.fm@localhost>]

I note with surprise that NetBSD's /bin/sh has grown interactive
features.  In particular, thanks to ~/.editrc, /bin/sh lets me have my
own tweaked mappings while in vi emulation mode, which makes it more
comfortable for me than /bin/ksh (whose user-definable keybindings only
work for emacs emulation as far as I can tell from the manpage).  On the
other hand, /bin/sh still has definite limits as an interactive shell
(doesn't expand $PS1, doesn't quote filenames when tab-completing ...),
and given its role as the standard script interpreter perhaps it should
be kept as small as possible for embedded systems' sake.  I'm wondering
what direction NetBSD is taking w.r.t interactive shells:
- work on making /bin/sh comfortable? (while keeping it reasonably
  small)
- keep /bin/sh for scripts, improve /bin/ksh if necessary? (I wonder if
  you could make it use editline)
- ksh's behaviour is set in stone, users who want something different
  from their interactive shell should get one from pkgsrc?

On a related note, what's the status of utf-8 support in the base
system shells?

Ian Leroux