Chris writes of not having a good way to look at more than a screen
worth of interactive program output.
While I'm sure that we'll hear many other interesting
approaches, let me plug EMACS. The stuff below works under X
or at the linux consoles.
First, for the general case, rather than specificly ftp, there
is the EMACS "shell window" feature. Start emacs, then type
"M-xshell" and hit enter. ("M-" something means to either type Esc,
then the something, or to type the something while holding down your
"Meta" key, usually the left alt key in recent RedHat setups.) This
creates an EMACS *shell* buffer, where you will see a shell prompt.
You can run any simple application here (e.g.; no curses) and you gain
the advantage of infinite scroll back. The page up and page down keys
will work if you don't want to bother remembering C-V and M-V. ("C-"
something is hold down the ctrl key while typing the something.) You
can even search backwards for things, if you want to bother to
remember and learn to use C-R. Note that you must remember to move
the text cursor to the end of the buffer before typing the next thing
at the application you're running (or the shell), or you will get
confused. The end key works if you don't want to remember "M->".
But for ftp, emacs comes with the ange-ftp package, which lets
you refer to any file available via ftp with any of emacs's commands
that take a file name. Since this includes the dired mode, you can
puruse directories on some other machine in a pretty snazzy way.
Dired displays a directory in a "buffer", in which you can scroll
around, open things (files come up to be edited or viewed, directories
come up in new dired buffers), copy things, and if you have the
necessary permissions, rename or delete things (among other stuff).
I'm sure that there's a specific way to run dired, but if you use the
open file command ("C-XC-F" and it will prompt you for the name at the
bottom of the screen) on a name that's a directory, dired comes up
automaticly, so I haven't bothered to learn any other way.
The way to specify a file (or directory) via ftp on another
machine is to begin the name with "/host.domain:/" (in which case it
tries anonymous ftp with your E-mail address as a password) or with
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/" (in which case it will prompt for a
password once per emacs session).
The other things that you should know are that the command to
exit emacs is "C-XC-C", that if you are running under X then the menu
bar at the top of the screen will let you exit, open a file, etc., and
that if emacs gets into a state that confuses you, you should be able
to at least get to the point of being able to exit by typing enough
C-G characters (which beep), possibly interspersed with an occasional
"C-XC-O". Emacs may ask you about whether you want to save file that
you have changed, and if you say no to any of them whether you really
want to exit with unsaved changes: if you didn't intend to change
anything, you can safely make the obvious answers.
(Sadly, even if you have the right combination of gpm setup
and emacs initialization files to be able to use the mouse to position
the cursor when not using X, you will not be able to access the menus
using the mouse from the console.)
Bill
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