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Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.


From: John Gardner
Subject: Re: [groff] 04/05: {g, n}roff.1.man: Give assistance to pager users.
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2019 10:20:06 +1000

>
>
> *There were 24 lines per page unless over-ridden on the command line.*
> *The tool was real unix tool, lean and mean with only a few arguments.*
> *It was far less functional than either 'more' or 'less' but it did**let
> you page through a file or STDIN nicely*


Yep, that's the sort of pager I imagined would have been present on all
terminals. I can't imagine how people coped with using `ls -l` in
directories with more files than their screen had lines (unless one was
fastidious with their use of grep(1)…) It just feels unrealistic for a
terminal not to have a pager. Then again, our TTYs these days have
full-screen editing, 24-bit colour codes
<https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728>, Fraktur lettering, and God knows
what else I'm forgetting...

Wish I had access to a "real" dumb terminal so I could use it and never
complain about this MacBook's crappy screen ever again...

On Wed, 3 Jul 2019 at 09:46, Damian McGuckin <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Wed, 3 Jul 2019, John Gardner wrote:
>
> >> *Some terminals, the Tek 401x series especially, could* *be configured
> >> to tell the host to stop sending text on* *a "page full" condition.
> >> Some sent the proper RS-232**hardware signals, some sent
> >> <ctrl-s>/<ctrl-x>.*
> >
> > Really? That's interesting. What did <ctrl-s> do? On the terminal
> emulators
> > I have on hand at the moment, none of them are responding or behaving
> > differently.
> >
> > I always assumed terminals had some form of paging ability, no matter how
> > rudimentary, but I see how wrong I was....
>
> At the risk of showing my age, in the very LATE 1970s, there was a program
> at UNSW called 'pg' which did paging on CRT screens. There wete 24 lines
> per page unless over-ridden on the command line. The tool was real unix
> tool, lean and mean with only a few arguments. It was far less functional
> than either 'more' or 'less' but it did let you page through a file or
> STDIN nicely. You had to pipe things through 'col' first in some cases and
> 'pg' generally played nicely with half-line motions from memory (which is
> really being stretched). I liked 'pg'. More seems overkill. A shame we
> lost it. I think there is another tool out there are several tools called
> 'pg' in the last 20 years but it is not the same as the original. One is
> not even a pager but I cannot remember what it is.
>
> There is a lean+mean tool called 'pg' on Github but it is no relation to
> the one to which I refer. It is super, super basic.
>
> Regards - Damian
>
> Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037
> Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not wanted
> here
> Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present
> employer
>


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