[no subject]

[KMP at MIT-MC (Kent M. Pitman)]

In your design of streams, maybe that is a good place to correct the
absence of a prompt capability. Case in point is:
(PROGN (CURSORPOS 'A TYO) (PRINC '|-> | TYO) (SETQ INPUT (READLINE TYI)))
If the guy types ^Z or ^L he will completely lose his orientation and can't
really get a prompt back conveniently. ^K similarly could derive nicer display
by running a PROMPT function special to a given stream, or by printing what
is in the PROMPT variable, or whatever mechanism might be made available.
I think this is particularly important becuz I would like to use the lisp
readline function but don't often becuz it is very often true (I have lots
more cases of it in last few days w/ SDRC project am working on and the
users that are using it) that a person will get a :SEND or something in the
middle of what he is doing and then think he is at DDT -- since typing ^L
can't offer any assistance in orienting him, he loses, and ends up typing a
:SEND back to me from inside Lisp.  Those of us who know what is going on
are not bothered much by the current reader, but a person using a predesigned
package without knowing much about ITS will not.
--kmp