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GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

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Re: GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

#71

Post by blasdel »

mdakin wrote: post #51

It also gives OSX RS-232 terminal emulation capability. As far as I know OSX ships with no other such program. Once you get your USB dongle's driver situation under control you just: screen device baud ex: screen /dev/tty.usbserial-FTDPZOEJ 115200 Very useful for embedded system hackers and others who still need to speak RS-232.

I have not used a single other serial console since I accidentally discovered this feature in screen a few years ago. Hyperterminal, minicom, gtkterm, et. al. were the bane of my existence.

Re: GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

#72

Post by blasdel »

soundphed wrote: post #24
silentbicycle wrote: post #20

You might want to consider tmux ( http://tmux.sourceforge.net/ ) as an alternative. Its cleaner (and, incidentally, BSD-licensed) codebase means that it's getting features that have been gathering dust on screen's to-do list for ages. Most notably, its dwm/XMonad-style layouts ( http://tmux.sourceforge.net/tmux6.png ) are really nice. AFAICT, screen doesn't even officially have vertically split windows yet, it's stil…

Thanks, I will look at that, looks rad! I just thought the article covered some really key points about multiplexing terminals in general...

tmux is not rad, just clean -- see http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/neercs for a truly radical screen replacement:

  Grab a process that you forgot to start inside neercs
  Great screensaver
  Real time thumbnails of your shells
  Special effects when closing a window
  Various window layouts...

Re: GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

#73

Post by pyre »

barrkel wrote: post #69

The difficulty of scrolling back in the buffer (C-a ESC PgUp is a longer and more tedious key sequence than Shift+PgUp), and lack of full terminal support (e.g. man, less, etc. don't restore screen contents on exit) mean I strictly only use screen on ssh connections. Perhaps the terminal support issue could be worked out with better termcap etc. settings, but I haven't found the answers. I asked questions here: http:…

> (C-a ESC PgUp is a longer and more tedious key sequence than Shift+PgUp)

Try entering Copy Mode ('C-a ['). Once in Copy Mode you can page up and down without any modifiers. Just hit ']' to exit Copy Mode. You can also use the up and down arrows in Copy Mode. It's mostly meant for selecting regions of text to yank, but I find it's the easiest way to access the scrollback buffer.

Re: GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

#74

Post by mooism2 »

pyre wrote: post #37
mooism2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My remote `.bash_profile` ends screen -d -R logout On the rare occasions that I don't want to run under screen, I run `ssh -t user@host bash`.

I hope you mean on the server. IIRC, some things like GNOME will source .profile or .bash_profile so that you can have globally customized $PATH,etc variables.

On remote servers, yes.

Re: GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

#75

Post by pyre »

tedunangst wrote: post #46
pyre wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way there are people that want their entire software usage to be GPL/MIT/BSD/etc, there are people that want everything to be non-GPL. Unless you are going to be hacking on GNU Screen and feel the need to do something that the GPL forbids, there's really no reason to stop yourself from using a software package just because it's GPL-licensed.

I think it's ironic that your argument is remarkably similar to "nothing stops you from using a closed source program unless you planned to start hacking on the source." Sometimes you don't know when you start using something what amount of hacking may be required.

Yes, but you can contribute to GPL-licensed projects. It's just specific things that you are limited in. We're talking orders of magnitude. 'closed-source and GPL' and 'MIT/BSD and GPL' aren't even in the same ballpark.

Re: GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

#76

Post by mahmud »

blasdel wrote: post #72
soundphed wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I will look at that, looks rad! I just thought the article covered some really key points about multiplexing terminals in general...

tmux is not rad , just clean -- see http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/neercs for a truly radical screen replacement: Grab a process that you forgot to start inside neercs Great screensaver Real time thumbnails of your shells Special effects when closing a window Various window layouts...

How does any of this work when through putty or when connecting to X-less unices from the myriad of non-Unix boxes out there?

Re: GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

#77

Post by barrkel »

pyre wrote: post #73
barrkel wrote: post #69

The difficulty of scrolling back in the buffer (C-a ESC PgUp is a longer and more tedious key sequence than Shift+PgUp), and lack of full terminal support (e.g. man, less, etc. don't restore screen contents on exit) mean I strictly only use screen on ssh connections. Perhaps the terminal support issue could be worked out with better termcap etc. settings, but I haven't found the answers. I asked questions here: http:…

> (C-a ESC PgUp is a longer and more tedious key sequence than Shift+PgUp) Try entering Copy Mode ('C-a ['). Once in Copy Mode you can page up and down without any modifiers. Just hit ']' to exit Copy Mode. You can also use the up and down arrows in Copy Mode. It's mostly meant for selecting regions of text to yank, but I find it's the easiest way to access the scrollback buffer.

C-a ESC is copy mode, as far as I am aware. At least that's what it says down the bottom of the screen when I do it.

To be clear, C-a ESC puts me in a mode where I can then freely page through the scrollback buffer with PgUp and PgDn, but the problem is that's 4 key presses required for something that only needs 2 in a normal terminal, and Ctrl (with A), Esc, and PgUp are about as far apart as you can get on a keyboard, which doesn't make for efficiency.

Re: GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

#78

Post by barrkel »

decklin wrote: post #70
barrkel wrote: post #69

The difficulty of scrolling back in the buffer (C-a ESC PgUp is a longer and more tedious key sequence than Shift+PgUp), and lack of full terminal support (e.g. man, less, etc. don't restore screen contents on exit) mean I strictly only use screen on ssh connections. Perhaps the terminal support issue could be worked out with better termcap etc. settings, but I haven't found the answers. I asked questions here: http:…

try "altscreen on". (see also the -a option, and http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/html_node/Window-T... ).

The -a option didn't work, but altscreen on in my ~/.screenrc seems to have worked. Thanks!

Re: GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

#79

Post by pyre »

barrkel wrote: post #77
pyre wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (C-a ESC PgUp is a longer and more tedious key sequence than Shift+PgUp) Try entering Copy Mode ('C-a ['). Once in Copy Mode you can page up and down without any modifiers. Just hit ']' to exit Copy Mode. You can also use the up and down arrows in Copy Mode. It's mostly meant for selecting regions of text to yank, but I find it's the easiest way to access the scrollback buffer.

C-a ESC is copy mode, as far as I am aware. At least that's what it says down the bottom of the screen when I do it. To be clear, C-a ESC puts me in a mode where I can then freely page through the scrollback buffer with PgUp and PgDn, but the problem is that's 4 key presses required for something that only needs 2 in a normal terminal, and Ctrl (with A), Esc, and PgUp are about as far apart as you can get on a keyboa…

Well, I always just used C-a [ to get into copy mode. Another thing to consider is that once you are in copy mode you don't have to hit or continue to hold down the shift key along with PgUp/PgDn.

I personally don't find that to be an annoyance, though. Especially not when stacked up against all of the other benefits you get from using screen.

Re: GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal

#80

Post by barrkel »

pyre wrote: post #79
barrkel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C-a ESC is copy mode, as far as I am aware. At least that's what it says down the bottom of the screen when I do it. To be clear, C-a ESC puts me in a mode where I can then freely page through the scrollback buffer with PgUp and PgDn, but the problem is that's 4 key presses required for something that only needs 2 in a normal terminal, and Ctrl (with A), Esc, and PgUp are about as far apart as you can get on a keyboa…

Well, I always just used C-a [ to get into copy mode. Another thing to consider is that once you are in copy mode you don't have to hit or continue to hold down the shift key along with PgUp/PgDn. I personally don't find that to be an annoyance, though. Especially not when stacked up against all of the other benefits you get from using screen.

I understand. The primary benefits of screen to me is disconnect / reconnect, and as such it's useful for servers, but local terminals, not so much.

The other advantage of "rich" support is mousewheel combined with selection: with Cygwin rxvt, I can scroll up, begin a selection with the mouse, and scroll down with the mouse wheel and thereby copy multiple pages of scrollback buffer into the Windows clipboard, ready for e.g. paste in to blog article.

The advantage of keyboard-free casual scrollback when I'm writing such articles, checking what I did earlier, is something you learn to take for granted, and is quite obviously missing with screen.

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