Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Stefan Kangas]

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So there is this nifty variable called `baud-rate'.  It can be used to
enable some special display hacks if you are on a connection slower than
2400 baud.  It enables you, I guess, to run Emacs 27.1 on that spanking
new 1987 modem that you have just been dying to get your hands on.

Yet there has been a marked lack of interest in it.  :-(

I wasn't able to find any discussion about it on emacs-devel since 2005,
except for an honorable mention when Alan Mackenzie said in 2015 that
the parts in isearch.el that use it are "probably obsolete".

More seriously, is `baud-rate' still relevant in the next decade?
Should we make it obsolete in Emacs 28.1?

PS. To stir up some additional feelings, I've attached a patch that
    would remove the "probably obsolete" parts from isearch.el.

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Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Sometimes use across the network will suffer from slow transfer of output.
But there won't be a fixed number that says what the limit is.

So I think that baud-rate is obsolete, but it might be nice to have
some way of detecting such slowness and doing somethhing to reduce the
output.  But I don't have any idea for how.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>
> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2020 14:11:40 -0700
> 
> So there is this nifty variable called `baud-rate'.  It can be used to
> enable some special display hacks if you are on a connection slower than
> 2400 baud.  It enables you, I guess, to run Emacs 27.1 on that spanking
> new 1987 modem that you have just been dying to get your hands on.
> 
> Yet there has been a marked lack of interest in it.  :-(
> 
> I wasn't able to find any discussion about it on emacs-devel since 2005,
> except for an honorable mention when Alan Mackenzie said in 2015 that
> the parts in isearch.el that use it are "probably obsolete".
> 
> More seriously, is `baud-rate' still relevant in the next decade?
> Should we make it obsolete in Emacs 28.1?

In my remote corner of the world, I sometimes have periods of time
that Internet crawls at 3KB/sec.  If I need to use Emacs on a remote
machine during that time, this "obsolete" mode is very useful, because
SSH sends more than just the characters I type.

So I definitely don't want it to become obsolete, let alone removed.
If "baud-rate" is what bothers you, we can augment the name or
documentation to explain when this is useful and why.

Thanks.

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Stefan Kangas]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> In my remote corner of the world, I sometimes have periods of time
> that Internet crawls at 3KB/sec.  If I need to use Emacs on a remote
> machine during that time, this "obsolete" mode is very useful, because
> SSH sends more than just the characters I type.

Thanks for explaining.  It wasn't obvious to me that there still existed
connections where this could be useful.  Now that I think about it, I
should probably have realized this.

Please forgive my attempt at being funny.

> If "baud-rate" is what bothers you, we can augment the name or
> documentation to explain when this is useful and why.

It could be useful, to avoid that others are left wondering like me.
OTOH, anyone can now search the emacs-devel archives and find your
explanation.

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>
> Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 10:21:30 +0000
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > If "baud-rate" is what bothers you, we can augment the name or
> > documentation to explain when this is useful and why.
> 
> It could be useful, to avoid that others are left wondering like me.
> OTOH, anyone can now search the emacs-devel archives and find your
> explanation.

Perhaps to prevent any future confusion, we could make the slow
isearch mode dependent on something other than baud-rate?  Like have
some customizable variable or somesuch?  If implemented in a
backward-compatible manner, that could be good progress, I think.

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Stefan Monnier]

> In my remote corner of the world, I sometimes have periods of time
> that Internet crawls at 3KB/sec.

That sounds equivalent to the default value of `baud-rate` (19200).

> If I need to use Emacs on a remote machine during that time, this
> "obsolete" mode is very useful, because SSH sends more than just the
> characters I type.

What do you mean by "mode", exactly?
Do you mean you (setq baud-rate 2400)?

> So I definitely don't want it to become obsolete, let alone removed.
> If "baud-rate" is what bothers you, we can augment the name or
> documentation to explain when this is useful and why.

I think your use of the word "mode" above might be a good hint at how to
reword this functionality, e.g. something like `low-bandwidth-mode`.


        Stefan

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 11:09:35 -0400
> 
> > In my remote corner of the world, I sometimes have periods of time
> > that Internet crawls at 3KB/sec.
> 
> That sounds equivalent to the default value of `baud-rate` (19200).

No, because when this happens, packets get lost.  Otherwise, how could
a fast connection suddenly become so slow?

> > If I need to use Emacs on a remote machine during that time, this
> > "obsolete" mode is very useful, because SSH sends more than just the
> > characters I type.
> 
> What do you mean by "mode", exactly?
> Do you mean you (setq baud-rate 2400)?

No, I mean isearch-slow-terminal-mode.

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Stefan Monnier]

>> > In my remote corner of the world, I sometimes have periods of time
>> > that Internet crawls at 3KB/sec.
>> That sounds equivalent to the default value of `baud-rate` (19200).
> No, because when this happens, packets get lost.  Otherwise, how could
> a fast connection suddenly become so slow?

Right, the overall bandwidth is comparable but not the burstiness.

>> > If I need to use Emacs on a remote machine during that time, this
>> > "obsolete" mode is very useful, because SSH sends more than just the
>> > characters I type.
>> What do you mean by "mode", exactly?
>> Do you mean you (setq baud-rate 2400)?
> No, I mean isearch-slow-terminal-mode.

So you set `isearch-slow-terminal-mode` manually?

What do you think of removing `baud-rate` and replacing it with
a `low-bandwidth-mode` global minor mode?


        Stefan

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: stefan@marxist.se,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 14:32:38 -0400
> 
> >> > If I need to use Emacs on a remote machine during that time, this
> >> > "obsolete" mode is very useful, because SSH sends more than just the
> >> > characters I type.
> >> What do you mean by "mode", exactly?
> >> Do you mean you (setq baud-rate 2400)?
> > No, I mean isearch-slow-terminal-mode.
> 
> So you set `isearch-slow-terminal-mode` manually?

No, there's an isearch.el defcustom to cause that.

> What do you think of removing `baud-rate` and replacing it with
> a `low-bandwidth-mode` global minor mode?

I thought that was what I proposed up-thread?

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Stefan Monnier]

>> What do you think of removing `baud-rate` and replacing it with
>> a `low-bandwidth-mode` global minor mode?
> I thought that was what I proposed up-thread?

I guess I was a bit ... slow? ;-)


        Stefan

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Stefan Kangas]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> What do you think of removing `baud-rate` and replacing it with
> a `low-bandwidth-mode` global minor mode?

I like this idea.  It would immediately make the situation much more
clear.

Perhaps we should add the idea to the bug tracker.

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > In my remote corner of the world, I sometimes have periods of time
   > that Internet crawls at 3KB/sec.

   That sounds equivalent to the default value of `baud-rate` (19200).

The default is quite dependant on how you start Emacs and where.  It
can be set to 0, 1200, 9600 depending on the situation.  E.g., on my
system the default value is 0, but it is set to 9600.  19200 sounds as
if your terminal and Emacs could figure out what they wanted.

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Andreas Schwab]

On Okt 24 2020, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

> 19200 sounds as if your terminal and Emacs could figure out what they
> wanted.

19200 is the fake value that is used by the graphical frames on X.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 7578 EB47 D4E5 4D69 2510  2552 DF73 E780 A9DA AEC1
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[tomas]

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On Sat, Oct 24, 2020 at 10:57:24AM +0200, Andreas Schwab wrote:
> On Okt 24 2020, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> 
> > 19200 sounds as if your terminal and Emacs could figure out what they
> > wanted.
> 
> 19200 is the fake value that is used by the graphical frames on X.

19200 was a very popular speed back then, when 9200 was too slow,
the cables became shorter and "RS232" was tweaked and hacked to
fit the PC landscape (short cables, lower voltage swing and things).

Then modems became faster, because of more sophisticated modulation
schemes and the last mile becoming shorter and shorter [1].

Ah, good ol' times :)

Cheers

[1] Miles don't become shorter. But as most customers live in
   densely populated areas, last mile providers discovered that
   the others "just don't exist" unless the government shells
   out money for them. Which is used for many other and Ponzi
   schemes...

 - t

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Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Jean Louis]

* Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> [2020-10-23 00:12]:
> So there is this nifty variable called `baud-rate'.  It can be used to
> enable some special display hacks if you are on a connection slower than
> 2400 baud.  It enables you, I guess, to run Emacs 27.1 on that spanking
> new 1987 modem that you have just been dying to get your hands on.

Modems and direct connections are used today. Many government offices
in various countries use for us in Western Countries obsolete old
hardware. There are also organizations using direct modem transfers
and connection rather than Internet for security purposes.

Don't know for Emacs, I just say modems are in use, there are phones
with modems and people could be connecting to their computers over
modems. On my computer there is modem and I am buying older phones
with modems for mass fax and SMS marketing purposes. I am just giving
you different view points.

Dial up Internet is still used in many countries.

Here is article before 2013:
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/12-outdated-technologies-refuse-to-die

The last time I had a dial-up account, I set it to download the Starr
report. I said bye bye bye to Earthlink right after that and started
getting jiggy with a broadband connection. However, according to a
December study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 4 percent
of American adults still use a modem to get online. That’s more than
10 million people accessing the Web at 56.6 or slower speeds. Some of
these folks are among the 6 percent of Americans who live in areas
without broadband access, while others either can't afford or are too
cheap to pay for high-speed services.

Now is 7 years later, there scan be still many people using
modems. When using modems, modem may switch on bad network connection
to lower baud rate, I do not know for 2400 but I know it is possible.

-- 
Jean Louis

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   More seriously, is `baud-rate' still relevant in the next decade?
   Should we make it obsolete in Emacs 28.1?

Please don't! This is immensly useful still.  When connecting to
remote machines in the field, somewhere up who know where the
connection can be abysymal..

Sometimes, a small embeddedd GNU/Linux system that you hook up over a
serial line at low baud rates (say 9600) is easier to debug than going
full 115200.  A lot of strange embdedded equipment have serial lines,
which sometimes are very slow still capable of running a recent
version of GNU Emacs (yes, it is very crazy world we live in).

Re: Relevance of `baud-rate' in the 2020s?

[Pedro Andres Aranda Gutierrez]

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Hi

Scenario: connect to Rasperry Pi through a serial interface.
I think it is quite significant here ;-)
/PA
-- 
Fragen sind nicht da um beantwortet zu werden,
Fragen sind da um gestellt zu werden
Georg Kreisler

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