Clearing the screen and other such things.

[Tim McNerney <TIM@MIT-MC.ARPA>]

    Date: Mon, 29 Jul 85 09:06 EDT
    From: Bernard S. Greenberg <BSG at SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>

        Date: Fri, 26 Jul 85 14:49 EDT
        From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>

        As nearly as I can tell, Common Lisp offers no way to even clear the
        screen.
    It hurts me to see various sanded-edged parallelipipeds and egg-shaped 
    frobs being offered for the reinvention of the wheel.

Fine.  I just assume NOT waste time re-inverting the wheel.  I would
be perfectly happy if we copied verbatim the functional of the ITS TTY
code.  Unfortunately there are problems with this.  Some of which I
have alluded to in previous messages.  

The main problem with ITS, in this respect, is that it is difficult to
tell it about new terminals.  This is because the knowledge of each
supported terminal in embodied in assembly language code which many
users are afraid to touch.  Now, given the ideocyncracies of various
terminals, there are clear advantages to this over any declarative
database like unix termcap.  Furtunately we can do it in Lisp this
time around.  Are there any ITS wizards who would like to write a
proposal for an ITS-style terminal system for Common Lisp?  How about
you, Bernie?

	Tim McNerney