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Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

panic.com

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Re: Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

#92
post #48
post #8

So, as a UNIX hacker, here's what I don't get about the iOS community. There is way too much excitement over the simplest things ever. Let's break down some of the copy for this app: Prompt is a clean, crisp, and cheerful SSH client What does that mean? What does a clean ssh client do; not commit any protocol violations? What is crisp? When you bite into it, it's like a ripe apple? What does cheerful mean? Is the ssh…

It isn't the ssh protocol(mostly), it is the user interface. Mapping a physical keyboard and display onto a touchscreen/display involves tradeoffs. • The keyboard I am using right now is >50% larger than my entire iPad display. It won't fit even if I sacrifice the entire display to keyboard. • Will you overlay the keyboard on the character matrix? How do you know where to put it that you won't cover the part I'm tryi…

> really? I need to sort through 32 terminal emulators to use ssh on my Debian machine?

Really?

Unless you installed debian-minimal, and installed the gui piecemeal from there, your system came with a terminal emulator (gnome-terminal or kterm) in a nice menu, which will work perfectly as soon as you type 'ssh myserver.tld'.

Besides, it's not like Prompt is the only terminal emulator/ssh client available on the app store. A quick google reveals there is also iSSH, TouchTerm, Terminal 426, and pTerm.

Re: Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

#93
post #88
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. It did not.

Could you elaborate?

I had a hard time trying to use irssi inside screen. On each new line it would refresh some 10-15 times and usually clutter most of the bottom half of the screen. Definitely still needs work. With these problems fixed, it might well become the finest iOS SSH app there is.

Re: Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

#94
post #8

So, as a UNIX hacker, here's what I don't get about the iOS community. There is way too much excitement over the simplest things ever. Let's break down some of the copy for this app: Prompt is a clean, crisp, and cheerful SSH client What does that mean? What does a clean ssh client do; not commit any protocol violations? What is crisp? When you bite into it, it's like a ripe apple? What does cheerful mean? Is the ssh…

It seems just like ConnectBot for Android, except it costs $5.

I love ConnectBot. Is there a way to hit CTRL + arrows?

Re: Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

#95
post #53
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a happy user of Terminal, what's wrong with it? It's fast, it's simple, it supports multiple colour profiles, it can be customised like any other shell... What more do you want out of your terminals?

To choose a few obvious gaffes: - no xterm mouse support (no, option-click is not the same) - the utterly stupid default for PageUp/PageDown/Home/End, which is correct for OSX UI, but utterly wrong for terminals. Less obvious (relavent to UI): - No notification support - No window splitting (yes, screen works, but, re: changing panes, see xterm mouse, above) - inability to launch a particular named window group from…

I've got Home/Down working correctly in my Terminal.app, you've got to go into Preferences->Settings->Keyboard, then scroll down to find the "home" key, click "Edit", and set the action as "send string to shell", and enter "\001" as the string. Repeat for "end", using "\005" as the string.

Caveat - this is how my work laptop is setup, my personal one is set to "\033[H" and "\033[F" for home/end respectively, but it works as well and I don't remember how I set it up. I'm remembering having some issues with the prefs wanting to escape the backslashes so "\003[H" ended up as "\\003[H" or something like that...

For PageUp/PageDown I find that applying the shift key with them does the trick (at least in applications like vim/less). However you can probably apply a similar trick for them in the prefs.

The Control key (jumping word boundaries) works sometimes for me, sometimes not, haven't tracked that one down yet.

edit: by "correctly" for home/end I mean jumping to the beginning/end of a line.

Re: Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

#96
post #8

So, as a UNIX hacker, here's what I don't get about the iOS community. There is way too much excitement over the simplest things ever. Let's break down some of the copy for this app: Prompt is a clean, crisp, and cheerful SSH client What does that mean? What does a clean ssh client do; not commit any protocol violations? What is crisp? When you bite into it, it's like a ripe apple? What does cheerful mean? Is the ssh…

> There is way too much excitement over the simplest things ever. Simple things done well are among the most delightful discoveries I can make in my human existence. Have you ever had a perfect omelet? I mean, perfect? Fluffy, nice balance of tasty fillings, not overdone? I have. Maybe twice. Each time, it was wonderful . Wonderful for the fact that with just five ingredients, it created subtle, delicious flavors and…

Have you ever read an idiotic comment?

It starts with some stupid explanation about a perfect omelet, while conveniently forgetting that an Omelet is just some crap that we eat to get nutrition, so that we can get more important things done.

Re: Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

#97
post #8

So, as a UNIX hacker, here's what I don't get about the iOS community. There is way too much excitement over the simplest things ever. Let's break down some of the copy for this app: Prompt is a clean, crisp, and cheerful SSH client What does that mean? What does a clean ssh client do; not commit any protocol violations? What is crisp? When you bite into it, it's like a ripe apple? What does cheerful mean? Is the ssh…

What you're pointing out is a quality of the Mac community, which has a certain amount of overlap with the iOS community. In this particular case, the company - Panic - is a highly regarded indie Mac developer so the copy reads like how it would for Mac apps. Many Mac users geek out on user interfaces that are sparse and simple and uncluttered - this is the audience to which this SSH client is pandering so it's no su…

Be that as it may, but, uh......

When I PuTTY into a Linux box or, on a linux box, type "ssh me@sweetbox", I don't see any clutter. It's pretty sparse and simple - just a brief prompt and a blinking cursor. I don't even know how it could become more than that...

I think it speaks volumes about the progress of iOS apps (and iOS in general) towards being a usable computer that a SSH client is exciting.

Re: Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

#98
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems just like ConnectBot for Android, except it costs $5.

I love ConnectBot. Is there a way to hit CTRL + arrows?

Yes, the Prompt keyboard features both a ctrl toggle and arrow keys.

Screen shots here: http://www.panic.com/blog/2011/04/introducing-prompt-ssh-for...

and here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prompt/id421507115?mt=8

Re: Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

#99
I'm presently using iSSH, which supports port tunnels (SSH Port Forwarding as PuTTY calls it).

Could anyone enlighten me as to whether or not it supports SSH port forwarding and how well that works? iSSH works pretty well, but it pops up regularly warning that it's going to disconnect due to inactivity (despite the fact that I'm actively using the port tunnel to RDP into something).

Re: Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

#100
post #62
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just checked the .pem I was given (by a person, not by Amazon) - looks like it was an RSA format key all along. I'm a little confused - it's possible I'm an idiot. I'll check to make sure I'm an idiot by seeing what I can generate from Amazon itself.

I've noticed the same thing. AWS keys appear to actually be RSA keys, with a .pem extension.

They still don't seem to work with the app though. I've tried multiple approaches and it keeps claiming the key was rejected by the server. The ssh log only shows:

    Apr 14 21:20:51 ip---- sshd[31560]: Received disconnect from ---------: 11: Normal Shutdown. Thank you!
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