Hi Paul,
I'm going to let Jon respond to some of these points, but some of the details
you reference are in response to a previous question and not specific to your
question. Terminal configuration will make more sense if you read Travis' post
(that I linked) and go through setting up your preferences (Command+comma),
with the "Settings" menu selected from the preferences title bar menu, and the
various tabs ("Text", "Window", "Shell", etc.) set up with the parameters that
Travis recommends. You probably want to change your terminal emulation under
the "Advanced" menu from "xterm-color" to something like vt100 or vt102, but
there's a whole list of setup options, which is why I sent you the link.
Scrollback refers to the fact that the Terminal window is a scrolling window
that by default keeps an unlimited number of rows. It's different from your
"History", which in the unix and linux sense is a list of the commands that you
issued, since the Terminal window also contains the system's response, which is
what you surmised in your question 1. Command-K clears the window of previous
text. Presumably, when you issue a command, you only want to read off the
information that comes back, and not the entire scrolling window, with the
previous commands, hence the distinction about the VoiceOver text block.
VoiceOver will not be reporting things that are already gone if you clear the
window. Curses is a terminal control library for unix-like systems. If you
were a programmer constructing text user interface applications you might use
this. Sorry, but most of the questions we get about Terminal are usually
either from people with a linux or unix background, or people who work in
Information Technology. I'm not an IT professional or programmer myself, so
you'll probably get better answers on some of these details from others. And
even in Travis' post you can skip over the first paragraph, since it's in
answer to programmer specific questions about emacs and gcc (loosely speaking,
an editor -- with a lot of other capabilities, and a compiler collection).
Just start reading the specifics about the terminal setup.
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On May 20, 2011, at 08:55, Paul Erkens wrote:
> Hi Esther,
> It feels like the terminal is way more technical than DOS used to be, but
> wanting to get to know it means I'll have to start somewhere. The post from
> Jon doesn't make that much sense to me at this time. Hopefully, you can
> explain some about the following things:
> 1. What are scroll back items? I assume this Is your own command history with
> the command outputs. True?
> 2. What is the VoiceOver text block? Is it the item in the VoiceOver cursor
> or something else?
> 3. Why does Jon make a difference between the terminal window contents and
> the VoiceOver text block? In other words, if I clear screen my terminal
> window, could VoiceOver still be reporting things that are already gone for
> sighted folks?
> 4. What is curses mode?
>
> Kindly,
> Paul.
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Esther" <[email protected]>
> To: <[email protected]>
> Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 8:05 PM
> Subject: Re: terminal and voice over
>
>
> Hi Paul,
>
> First, you might want to read Jonathan Cohn's reply from last week on
> terminal usability:
> On May 13, 2011, Jon Cohn wrote:
>
>> Two more notes on terminal.
>>
>> by default terminal does not clear out scrollback items, so your entire
>> terminal session will be in both the terminal window and the VoiceOver text
>> block. You can change this in the preference panels or by hitting command-K
>> when you are about to start something new.. For example: I often will pipe
>> a man command to cat and but hit command-K to clear the scroll-back before
>> hitting enter. Three finger swipes will let you page through the text, and
>> VO-shift-J followed by VO-shift-uparrow (or shift+numpad 8 in numpad
>> commander mode) will get you to the top. I bet you can guess how to get to
>> the bottom.
>> In terms of cursor tracking, I usually have it off in command-line mode and
>> on incurses mode. Any function that will move the terminal cursor will then
>> cause the VO cursor to track it, but not the other way around.
>
> Secondly, the best single detailed post I've read outlining using Terminal
> with VoiceOver is one that Travis Siegel wrote on the Mac-Access list last
> October. He lists his preference configurations as part of the post. From
> the Mac-Access list archives, here's the link to his post on "Hints on using
> terminal":
> http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/2010/004769.html
>
> There's also a link on the bottom of each of the archived posts with more
> information about the Mac-Access mailing list for anyone who wants to join
> it. Apart from the settings issues for VoiceOver, probably the best
> introduction for new users to using terminal is the guide in the Take Control
> series of downloadable eBooks: "Take Control of the Mac Command Line with
> Terminal". Here's the link to the description from the Take Control web
> pages:
> http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/command-line
>
> HTH. Cheers,
>
> Esther
>
> On May 20, 2011, at 06:55, Paul Erkens wrote:
>
>> Hi Ester,
>>
>> When entering terminal mode, I'm having problems with VoiceOver focusing on
>> where my cursor is. Would you say terminal is accessible? If it is, then
>> what am I missing that makes operating it so difficult? I'm a starter in
>> terminal mode on the mac, but I do know of complex command line syntaxes
>> from my DOS years. The cmd shell in windows is still my friend. What do I do
>> to work nicely in terminal? Any usability suggestions? I'm very interested
>> to start off with it.
>> Kindly,
>> Paul.
>>> On Aug 26, 2010, at 9:08 PM, Esther wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Scott,
>>>>
>>>> Your Mac has SSH and SFTP, and other server functions built in. You can
>>>> access them directly from the command line in the Terminal app. I use
>>>> Terminal so frequently that I have it as one of the default apps in my
>>>> dock. (The dock can be useful as a quick way to navigate to apps that you
>>>> use frequently -- you can customize it to remove the apps that you don't
>>>> often use, and add ones that you do.)
>>>>
>>>> The Terminal app is located, not in the applications folder (which you can
>>>> reach in Finder with the shortcut of Command+Shift+A), but in the
>>>> Utilities folder, which is a sub-folder of Applications, and which you can
>>>> reach with Command+Shift+U. Then press "T" to navigate to "Terminal" and
>>>> launch/open the app. I use Command+Down arrow to do this.
>>>>
>>>> By default you'll be using the bash shell. To use ssh, to log into your
>>>> account on another system you can simply type:
>>>>
>>>> ssh <your login>AT<your domain>
>>>>
>>>> for example, if your login account name is "scott" and the machine name is
>>>> "computer. granados.net", you can type:
>>>>
>>>> ssh [email protected] and press return
>>>>
>>>> or you can use the IP address in place of the domain following the AT sign:
>>>>
>>>> ssh [email protected] and press return
>>>>
>>>> then type in your password.
>>>>
>>>> Use a similar syntax for sftp. Macs use "Open SSH" as the protocol.
>>>>
>>>> If you have some Unix/Linux background, there's an old web site: "Top Ten
>>>> Mac OS X Hints for Unix Geeks":
>>>> http://www.macdevcenter
>>>
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