On Mon, Aug 06, 2001 at 08:05:11PM -0500, Day Brown wrote:
> Maybe mandrake gives me crippleware. F5 will only copy the
> file at the scroll bar; F1 'help' gives me one page telling
> me didly. dont mention ins or plus, but thanx for the tip.
> it tells me the f10 exits help, and tells me f1 gets help,
> which I got acourse, but dont mention the others. I did
> misread. saw F7 mkdir, thought F6 ReMov(dir
>
F5 will copy the file the cursor/highlight bar is on or will copy
all tagged files.
Hmm, I forgot to mention what version of MC I use though if I'm
not mistaken most distros that include it have recent
versions. Mine is 4.5.54.
I did forget an important tip, the use of the left arrow key
to go back (the F-key status line in help also shows F-keys to use
such as F3 = Previous). The right arrow is the same as Enter.
These are actually Lynx navigation keys, gopher, too I suppose.
Also hitting the TAB key moves from link to link in help.
Here's some tips of moving around the help screen.
Compare your movements with mine. If something doesn't work then
maybe something is different (though I don't see how that's possible).
F1 Help
TAB to `contents' ENTER
TAB/arrow down to `Keys' (I won't say ENTER anymore)
[Quick explanation of what M-<chr>, C-<chr>, etc. means.]
Page down to see links to more keys depending on subject.
Spacebar also pages down, like in Lynx, `b' will go up/back a page
Check out `Directory Panels' as these are the keys you're likely
to use the most.
Use left-arrow or F3 to go back or hit F2 for Index.
That's the basics for moving around the help file.
> The convention I am used to with F1 gives me a table of
> contents, and then the authors, license, legal jargon
> either follows the table, or is at the end of the list.
> this thing has that crap right there. Tells me to hit
> enter if I want 'contents' and gives me a page or so
> about moving around, but dont mention the tagging bit
> at all. nor the asterisk.
>
contents --> Directory Panels
Tagging, moving around, etc. in the panels are there.
> F2 has some useful, but some cryptic stuff I either got
> no clue, or no use for. I am not used to the F keys being
> 'toggles', I expect to use the esc key to 'go back', which
> it does sometimes, but I dont see any reason it dont others.
>
F-keys aren't toggles that I know of. They usually do something
in particular (User Menu, View, Edit, Copy, Move/Rename, Mkdir, Delete,
Pull-down Menu, Exit task or MC).
The Esc key, in *nix, is usually an alternative to the Meta key which
doesn't exist on PC keyboards. Usually the Alt keys will have the
function but more often that not if you're in a certain terminal
the Alt key might not work (btw, usually the left Alt will act as
Meta). In this case Esc will almost always act as Meta. This is why
you have to hit it twice.
The first time you hit Esc MC waits for another key to be pressed
such as `c' (try it, hit Esc-c and you'll get the change directory
dialog. Alt-p will do completion to put in the last dir you typed
in, hit Alt-p again and you get a popup list of previous entries.
Esc-p will do the same).
Alt-c should be the key to use but if Alt isn't working you have
an alternative.
Anyway, you hit Esc the first time and MC waits for a key, hit it a
second time and that says to cancel something like close a dialog
or whatever.
Another tip for ya, two actually. Sometimes if you use MC in an
xterm you'll find a bunch of keys don't work, especially F-keys.
The alternative is to hit Esc-# where # is a number to represent
the F-key you want.
Esc-1 = F1
Esc-5 = F5
Esc-0 = F10
The other tip is to use the Learn keys function while in an
xterm.
F9 --> learn Keys
Don't arrow around or anything, just hit the keys you see listed
and hope each one is recognized.
Keys F13 to F20 are Shift-F3 to Shift-F10.
If any keys aren't recognized do as the screen says, TAB to what
didn't work, hit the space key (a red dialog pops up),
then hit the key that didn't work. If the red dialog disappears
then it worked.
If I'm not mistaken these settings are kept for use in that xterm
and won't affect what keys are recognized at the console.
You may have trouble with the [Completion/M-tab] keys.
MC and FreeBSD don't play well together so I'm still fighting with
the keys.
Different terms cause different behaviour (rxvt, xterm, konsole, Eterm).
> F5 sometimes tells me I dont have permission to copy to a floppy.
> but if I use the cli at the bottom, will anyway. I dunno how
> I figured that out. It tells me to hit 'esc' to exit the help
> viewer, but forgot to tell me I hadda do that twice.
>
Don't know about the permission thing.
> Back in the Linux Mandrake User Guide and Reference manaul,
> there is the list of figures.[period] no index. no mention
> of MC. Nor is MC listed in Idiot's guide to Linux, nor in
> Linux for Dummies.
>
Yeah. That's to be expected since MC isn't considered an integral
part to any OS or distribution. It's just one of those nice
things to have. I remember a buddy of mine telling me MC
wasn't included with his Red Hat. Not sure what version.
The GNOME version of MC sort of got all the attention.
Slackware, for instance, includes a lot of stuff in its ap1
directory where MC is as well as stuff like mp3 players,
CD ripping tools, various editors, MySQL, extra shells and such.
I don't think most of that stuff is in the Slackware book because
they're not a main part of the base OS nor needed for X functionality.
Too much space would be needed to include topics on everything
a particular distro might include.
With all the stuff MC can do I'd love to see a book or something
on it. After years of use I still discover new things.
> This is the chronic complaint of newbies Marc. Linux can
> do anything... if the newbie can figure out how. and How I
> learn, almost all the time, is from guys like you defending
> it with useful info that I cant _find_ anywhere else.
>
This mail is probably too long now but here's my example
of the newbie frustration.
A new guy says he's a newbie and states he wants a simple
way of doing xyz. Normally he's just looking for a pointer to an
existing utility or something. But the answers he gets are of the
Why don't you just write a perl/bash/csh script to do that.
Just write a small C program to do...
It's safe to assume that a newbie coming from DOS/Win/Mac probably
didn't do perl and wouldn't know shell scripting.
Sure one can learn in time but it doesn't help _now_.
Actually, I never did like the "Why don't you just..." kind
of replies on usenet. There's a certain condescending tone that
goes with a lot of those.
I do however believe RTFM is a valid response in most cases.
When you see a question like "What does chmod do?" on usenet that
person probably deserves every kind of RTFM response, nice or otherwise.
(^_^)
There's a man page for rtfm, btw. It's pretty funny.
Back to MC. If you have it check out the FAQ. Not so much a guide
to its use but it may answer some questions if something doesn't seem
to act right.
In my case it's in /usr/doc/mc-<version>/
Marc
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