pty-based front ends: rk, the Reactive Keyboard (was Re: ^Z signal)

[John (Most modern computers would break if you stood on them) Mackin <john@ civil.su.oz.au>]

Since people are talking about ile, atty, etc. here, and since we almost
certainly have a large set of new faces since the dim mists of time when
someone brought this up on the rc list, I thought I should mention what
I think is perhaps the most interesting of all the pty-based front ends:
rk, the Reactive Keyboard.  This interesting approach to history actually
tries to predict useful completions to what you type; indeed, if you tell
it to do so, it will predict _as_ you type.  The prediction is based on
what you've typed before, and can be primed from an rc/es style history
file.  There's actually some clever computer science in this, not just
hackery; there's a good paper on it.  I don't have the reference to hand
but full information is available for anonymous FTP on

	cs-sun-fsa.cpsc.ucalgary.ca

in

	pub/the.reactive.keyboard

That contains versions for other platforms as well as Unix, and also
documents and references, etc.  I don't know of mirrors of that but
the thing isn't too big.

There's also a version of the Unix version that's been (from the README)
`hacked in various ways at the MIT X Consortium.'  You can find that in
any X11/contrib archive near you as rk.tar.Z.

Disclaimer: I don't use it, since I would have had to hack it a bit to
make it work the way I really would have wanted, and I have never had time
to do that.  But I think it's intriguing and well worth a look.

OK,
John.