Re: Clearing the screen and other such things.

[Jim Meehan <Meehan@YALE.ARPA>]

I'm afraid I agree with most of the criticism of your proposal.  It
all sounds a little odd in an age where bitmaps and variable-width
fonts are so popular.  The fact that you propose functions to erase
the character in front of the cursor and behind the cursor but not
*at* the cursor suggests that you yourself are accustomed to something
smarter than a glass teletype.

In any case, I wanted specifically to object to your use of VALUES:

   ...  It should be possible to say
   (SETF (CHARACTER-POSITION) (VALUES x y))
   to later restore the cursor to the given coordinates.

VALUES is an "upward only" construction, and special forms
notwithstanding, you're trying to pass multiple values to the "setter"
of CHARACTER-POSITION.  Granted, VALUES is asymmetric, and
(MULTIPLE-VALUE-CALL SET-CHARACTER-POSITION (VALUES x y)) is uglier,
but VALUES in CL is a first attempt at providing a notation for passing
values to the continuation of the caller, not a substitute for CONS.
-------