Why is there no platform independent way of clearing a terminal?

[Mark Lawrence]

On 02/08/2010 19:14, Benjamin Kaplan wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 9:51 AM, David Robinow<drobinow at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Benjamin Kaplan
>> <benjamin.kaplan at case.edu>  wrote:
>>> ...
>>> So these are the packages needed just to run Python in Ubuntu. It doesn't
>>> include the packages required for the kernel, the desktop environment,
>> the
>>> window manager, the terminal, and whatever else you want running. In my
>>> fairly clean Ubuntu VM (I use it almost exclusively for testing), I have
>>> close to 1500 packages installed.
>>   As an admittedly stupid comparison, I have 1579 DLLs in my
>> \windows\system32 directory.
>> Some number of these have been upgraded by Windows Update. This is XP
>> Service Pack 3.
>> I'm not sure if this means that Windows is better because it has more
>> packages or that it is worse because it's got too many. :)
>>   --
>>
>
> A package is usually more than one file.
> http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/amd64/linux-image-2.6.32-21-generic/filelist
>
>
>>   http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>>
>

This is all very well, but what is the unladen airspeed velocity of a 
swallow in flight?  Answers on a postcard please, given that I expect 
both direction and speed!

Kindest regards.

Mark Lawrence.