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Now that we have a shared help application infrastrucutre (well, at least
surf, specx and jcmtdr do!) I'd like to turn on command line editing
support in SHL library.

I can do it using libreadline using the same mechanism used by specx.
ie the getaline library written by Remo that wraps readline calls such
that if libreadline is not available it falls back to simple I/O.
Adopting this simply means copying the code from specx to
libraries/getaline and adding one call to shl_sread.f. Couple of questions
before I do that:

 1. Clearly a function called "get_aline" in the getaline library
    doesn't really match the starlink naming convention. I can
    commit it to thirdparty/jac/getaline if there are objections
    but then it isn't clear whether that would imply JAC keeps the
    code in its CVS repository.

 2. ADAM applications clearly now have command line editing
    and history. (not provided by readline library - presumably
    an issue with GPL licence). Would it be preferable to use
    that scheme instead? Is that the code in pcs/misc/icl_reada.c?
    [emacs key bindings aren't supported though...] It seems to
    be re-implementing the readline library and doesn't look
    to be as easy to use as get_aline. It seems like if this
    approach is adopted, that this code should be factored out
    of pcs/misc.

Comments?

--
Tim Jenness
JAC software
http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~timj