Hello Bill!

  BS> emacs is not unix-specific.

I wondered about that.

  BS> As I understand it, it was first implemented on 36-bit
    > DEC mainframes and was later ported/reimplemented,
    > with command set intact, on a large number of
    > platforms, including unix.

So it was developed for TOPS?  Still surprising that it
shunned software handshaking though, since it was commonly
supported by DEC hardware.

  BS> The emacs authors viewed XON/XOFF flow control as a
    > fundamentally broken concept because (among other
    > things) it's in-band (consuming two character codes
    > which could otherwise be used as editor commands ;-)
    > ), and because it is not robust against dropped
    > characters .. if an XON gets dropped, communication
    > wedges.

That's a good point about dropped characters.  So I'm right
in thinking that it's Emacs that doesn't cope well with
software handshaking, rather than unix?

Regards,
  -
Andy.

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