[994] in Athena Bugs
listmaint (not a bug per se; rather a complaint)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert L. Krawitz)
Tue Sep 20 09:42:04 1988
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 88 09:40:33 EDT
From: Robert L. Krawitz <rlk@Think.COM>
To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: rlk@Think.COM
[Reference: I administer a list on athena, and I sometimes have to
change large numbers of addresses].
The problem with listmaint is that it is horrendously slow and likes
diddling with my terminal too much, as well as forcing me to use all
sorts of ugly menus. I realize that updating the database will be
slow; however, that is no excuse for the terminal updating to be slow.
Unsetting TERM and TERMCAP did not help; in fact, doing this caused
the current menu to be printed for each character I typed.
What I would like to see is a line oriented interface similar to
discuss or olcr that does not insist on doing fancy (and slow,
particularly over a slow network interface) terminal hacks. I don't
need menus, inverse video, and the like to maintain a list; what I
need is a simple, efficient way to look at the list and add or delete
members. For instance, commands such as
show user
or
s u
would be appropriate.
Along similar lines, I would like to be able to add or delete multiple
members simultaneously (perhaps restricted to one class); for example
add user rlk jis
and the same for delete (I don't think I should have to confirm this
necesarily; perhaps a command line option or the like? And also an
option to delete all that probably should ask for confirmation) This
might not speed the program up; I'm not familiar with the underlying
protocol. However, for me this is much more efficient; I'd rather
perform ten operations and wait a minute than perform one operation
and wait six seconds (after spending ten seconds entering all the
things it wants and waiting for my screen to update).
I remember that this was a problem with the equivalent program that
John Kohl wrote several years ago (no, I don't remember the name). I
had requested at that time that a batch type interface be introduced
rather than the fancy display-oriented interface.
harvard >>>>>> | Robert Krawitz <rlk@think.com>
bloom-beacon > |think!rlk
topaz >>>>>>>> . rlk@a.HASA.disorg
