opensolaris man page for enhance

enhance(1)							   User Commands							enhance(1)

NAME
       enhance - enhanced command-line editing facilities

SYNOPSIS
       enhance command [argument]...

DESCRIPTION
       The  enhance  program provides enhanced command-line editing facilities to users of third party applications, to which one doesn't have any
       source code. It does this by placing a pseudo-terminal between the application and the real terminal. It uses the tecla command-line  edit-
       ing  library to read input from the real terminal, then forwards each just completed input line to the application via the pseudo-terminal.
       All output from the application is forwarded back unchanged to the real terminal.

       Whenever the application stops generating output for more than a tenth of a second, the enhance program treats the latest incomplete output
       line as the prompt, and re-displays any incompleted input line that the user has typed after it. The small delay, which is imperceptible to
       the user, isn't necessary for correct operation of the program. It is just an optimization, designed to stop the input line from being  re-
       displayed so often that it slows down output.

       The user-level command-line editing facilities provided by the Tecla library are documented in the tecla(5) man page

   DEFICIENCIES
       The one major problem that hasn't been solved yet, is how to deal with applications that change whether typed input is echo'd by their con-
       trolling terminal. For example, programs that ask for a password, such as ftp and telnet, temporarily tell their controlling  terminal  not
       to  echo  what  the  user  types. Since this request goes to the application side of the pseudo terminal, the enhance program has no way of
       knowing that this has happened, and continues to echo typed input to its controlling terminal, while the user types their password.

       Furthermore, before executing the host application, the enhance program initially sets the pseudo terminal to noecho mode, so  that  every-
       thing  that it sends to the program doesn't get redundantly echoed. If a program that switches  to noecho mode explicitly restores  echoing
       afterwards, rather than restoring the terminal modes that were previously in force, then subsequently, every time  that	you  enter  a  new
       input line, a duplicate copy will be displayed on the next line.

FILES
       /usr/lib/libtecla.so    tecla library

       ~/.teclarc	       tecla personal customization file.

ATTRIBUTES
       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWesu			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability	     |Evolving			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO
       libtecla(3LIB), attributes(5), tecla(5)

SunOS 5.11							    18 May 2004 							enhance(1)