Chapter 4 is about mail on UNIX and UUCP.

Just like ylambda, I have done a small research about UUCP, as it is something new to me.

Chapter 5 is about the Usenet.

This chapter deals more with the behavior of Usenets users and its social aspects than with the technical aspects and implementation of the Usenet. Most of the chapter still applies to the WWW.

Quote:Newsgroups with large amounts of noise rarely keep those subscribers who can constructively add to the value of the newsgroup. The result is a polarization of newsgroups: those with low traffic and high content, and those with high traffic and low content

This is still valid in the Web and its forums.

Chapter 6 is about the terminal and TUI.

It begins explaining that the way UNIX was designed for teletypes is the Original Sin of the system, as much has evolved since those days.

The chapter describes three ways different operating systems handled different terminal manipulation procedures. UNIX chose to use a library that must be linked with every TUI program. This library just hides the fact that the UNIX kernel still thinks to be communicating with a teletype.

(06-02-2021, 10:19 AM)ylambda Wrote: I would love a better terminal, something that can draw properly. No curses, or ascii. No DEC Sixel type graphics. Would love to be able to "cat an image" file on a remote server. I want vim to feel like a graphical IDE. Let me mouseover and see typing information, when I debug code I want to be able to inspect the state of every variable. Yes using a mouse with vim, sacrilegious, and yes vim CAN show this information, but it does so within the limited blocks of a terminal.

That's exactly what I think. But its the consequence of the original sin the book talks about.

This chapter talks a little bit about the X windowing system and how it was supposed to make UNIX work on bitmap displays. More on that on the next chapter.