block-mode terminals, was Re: Editor religious wars (was Re: Museums)

Its my understanding that block mode terminals help you implement fill-out-forms for terminals. I don't know if curses like libraries take advantage of that. My understanding of curses is limited, but I don't believe it ever evolved to the point of implementing a forms mechanism as part of the library. IBM terminals are so weird that I know nothing about them. ASCII terminals implement block mode through an escape sequence. I don't know if they implement block mode similarly enough that a curses type abstraction could be put on top of it. Mostly what I've seen is that the application defines the editable portion of the screen using escape codes. The user can then fill out individual fields on the screen and navigate from field to field using the keys on the keyboard. Some key indicates that the user is done filling out the form and the terminal notifies the application that this is so. Some terminals send the field data at the same time as the notification, some don't and require the application to query that back from the terminal. I think it was typical for the terminal to bulk send the entire form when it acknowledged the user's "done" action. Now I'm wondering if there is some sort of game that could be created that exploited block mode :-) -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>