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Grex > Info > #316: PicoSpan Questions 1 and 2 | |
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prp
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PicoSpan Questions 1 and 2
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Mar 16 01:02 UTC 1999 |
How do I:
1. Get a list of conferences I have joined?
2. View Items and new stuff without seeing the 100-1000 responces that
were entered before I joined?
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| 38 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 1 of 38:
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Mar 16 05:02 UTC 1999 |
1. read the file .cflist in your directory.
2. enter the command fixseen at an Ok: prompt. You can then enter
the command read since 3/15/99 and those responses will be new
again (for example).
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prp
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response 2 of 38:
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Mar 16 21:01 UTC 1999 |
".cflist: No such file or directory"
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rcurl
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response 3 of 38:
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Mar 16 21:35 UTC 1999 |
Create the file .cflist, and put in it in a column the names of the
cfs would like to proceed to in order, after you start picospan.
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prp
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response 4 of 38:
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Mar 16 23:15 UTC 1999 |
Bringing us back to the original quextion: How do I get a list
of the conferences I've joined?
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davel
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response 5 of 38:
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Mar 17 01:34 UTC 1999 |
Try the following:
ls -1 .*.cf .cfdir/.*.cf
One of these templates (probably .cfdir/.*.cf) is likely to give you
an error message; just ignore it. The .*.cf files are your conference
participation files. (If you want to collect them all, along with a few other
Picospan-related files, in a directory called .cfdir, Picospan will figure
out that you've done this, & it keeps them separate from everything else.
If you don't know about this, you probably don't have a .cfdir.)
Note that all those dots are necessary ...
To jump back to what Rane was talking about: to create a .cflist file,
just enter set list and then enter a list of conference names. Next
time you run Picospan, it will come up in the first of these, and entering
the command next will take you to the next one with new activity
(according to Picospan's definition of "new activity"), skipping past any with
no new activity. The improvement in conferencing is much greater than it
sounds.
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rcurl
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response 6 of 38:
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Mar 17 05:42 UTC 1999 |
prp doesn't have a .cfdir, so the second template is not necessary. It
might also be more obvious to just list the directory with ls -al, and
read the .*.cf files, where * is the name of the cf.
You can also create a .cflist with pico .cflist pico is a simple
editor, with menus.
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prp
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response 7 of 38:
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Mar 17 21:06 UTC 1999 |
Pico doesn't really work with my terminal program and Grex's termcap file.
I'm working on this, but for now I cann't edit anything.
"set list" worked very well.
Next question: If an item is linked into two conferences I've joined, is
there anyway to stop seeing everything twice. What with the line dropping
all the time, I'm seeing enough stuff over and over again.
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rcurl
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response 8 of 38:
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Mar 17 23:21 UTC 1999 |
The command forget at a Respond or pass prompt will forget that item
in that cf, but leave the same item in other cfs intact.
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pfv
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response 9 of 38:
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Mar 18 05:55 UTC 1999 |
Yeah: 1) it's both sides..
A) Some telnet programs ae flat out stupid about wtf a keyboard
looks like;
B) Occasionally, grex/mnut/<yer favorite telnet site> gets stupid
and you must manually tweak yer .login - other times, you can
punch in !reset and get some action..
(you milage may vary)
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prp
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response 10 of 38:
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Mar 19 00:08 UTC 1999 |
Making prograss. "cat whatever" copies a file to the terminal. How do I
copy a file from the terminal?
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rcurl
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response 11 of 38:
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Mar 19 04:45 UTC 1999 |
The file isn't on the terminal, its in a file. Do you mean, something
like copy a highlighted selection to a file? That's a function of your
comm program.
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davel
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response 12 of 38:
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Mar 19 11:28 UTC 1999 |
At a guess, he means from the keyboard and/or emulating keyboard input using
cut-and-paste through his comm program, Rane.
Paul, if that's the case, cat is still the command. "cat > filename" will
copy your input to the file called filename, overwriting any existing file
with that name. "cat >> filename" will append to any existing file.
In either case, you need to know your end-of-file character, and type it
to terminate the cat command. The default is control-D, but you might have
it set to something else. (To make sure, use the command "stty -a"
and look for the setting for "eof" among about 10 lines of various
settings.)
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prp
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response 13 of 38:
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Mar 31 06:56 UTC 1999 |
More questions:
"help" suggests topics "dates" and "summary".
-- "help dates" doesn't work. Who broke what?
-- "help summary" goes on forever. Is it really supposed to do that?
How does one find out which conference a linked item is from?
How does one create a linked item?
Any way to check the spelling other than ":e", which invokes all of Pine?
Any way to set things up so that the delete key works right in Pine?
There must be, since it does on M-Net; there the arrow keys don't work.
How does one get Pico span to use the .Cf directory?
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prp
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response 14 of 38:
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Mar 31 07:14 UTC 1999 |
Any way to have Picospan pause after printing each response?
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davel
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response 15 of 38:
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Mar 31 11:09 UTC 1999 |
There are indeed some broken things in Picospan help. I posted some I found,
or emailed staff, when I was new here (back in 1992). <**SIGH**>
I think that help summary is supposed to have all that stuff, yes. It's very
useful, but you're right, it is endless.
Linked items are created normally, in one conference, then linked into another
conference by the fairwitness of that second conference. cfadm also can link
items, I think, but by policy normally doesn't; the policy is to leave such
things up to the FW, unless there's a pretty outstanding reason. (There's
a list somewhere of commands reserved for FWs.)
For the speller, try :spell at the beginning of a line. (That's assuming that
you're set up using gate as the text collector, but this has been the default
now for a couple of years or so.)
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "How does one get Pico span to use the
.Cf directory?". If you set up a directory called .cfdir, and put in it your
.cfonce and all your .*.cf files and your .cflist, then Picospan will find
them there and use that directory for participation files for any new cfs you
join. Is that what you meant?
I don't use pine, & have no idea on that one. Sorry.
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remmers
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response 16 of 38:
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Mar 31 13:32 UTC 1999 |
The way linking is implemented, it's not easy to find out what
conferences a linked item is linked to; that information isn't stored
in a central location.
I don't use pine either, so I can only speculate on the delete key
problem. Perhaps Grex and M-Net run different versions of pine. I
suspect, though, that the problem isn't with pine itself but rather
that Grex and M-Net have different notions of what your "erase"
character is. It's usually either control-h (ascii 8 decimal, also
known as "backspace", or it's control-? (ascii 127, also known as
"rubout" or "del"). If your delete key sends the code that the host
thinks is your erase character, then it tends to work correctly in all
applications. If not, then it won't.
Your erase character is configurable. You can type the command "stty
-a" to find out what your erase character is set to, and then the
command "stty erase '^h'" or "stty erase '^?'" to change it to
backspace or rubout, respectively. You might try experimenting with
that to see if it fixes the problem.
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rcurl
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response 17 of 38:
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Mar 31 18:16 UTC 1999 |
pine is an e-mail client. The editor is pico (no relation to Picospan).
They have similar origins and interfaces, of course. There are other
editors if you don't like pico.
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davel
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response 18 of 38:
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Apr 1 02:54 UTC 1999 |
Oh, yes, forgot that one. As John says, there's no easy way to find out what
other conference an item's linked to. Here's a way to do it, though, if you
really care: ls has an option to list the inode number of a file. Conference
items are in directories under /bbs; the filenames begin with a leading
underscore, followed by the item #. Once you know the inode #, find has an
option to search for files by inode #. (At least, this is true of SysV ls
and find. I haven't ever used either of these features on Grex.) As I say,
this is not a *good* way to find out where an item's linked, but there it is.
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prp
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response 19 of 38:
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Apr 2 07:12 UTC 1999 |
Also broken in the PicoSpan help file, Browse:
Browse will print just the header to items -- the item #,
date entered, author and header. ...
When I use browse, there is no date nor author listed. So,
how do I tell PicoSpan to do it the way it says it will?
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prp
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response 20 of 38:
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Apr 2 07:31 UTC 1999 |
Summary not only goes on forever, it's gibberish. "%(s you are
in a conference" and such.
:spell only works with Edalways on, which it is now.
:edit then invokes Pico which is great, but I have no idea why, as
Editor is set to Gate.
Oops I tried .cf instead of .cfdir. What is the Unix command to
rename a file? Silly me, I tried rename.
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prp
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response 21 of 38:
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Apr 2 07:46 UTC 1999 |
re 16:
My .login has "stty rows 34". That's fine for the backspace key, 08,
x08, erase, or ^H, whatever you choose to call it. The problem is
with the Delete key, 127, x7F, rubout, or ^?. Somehow it is being
adulterated before making it all the way to pine.
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prp
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response 22 of 38:
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Apr 2 07:50 UTC 1999 |
re 17:
I like Pico well enough, the big problem is that it is running on
a remote host, but that's not Pico's fault.
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prp
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response 23 of 38:
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Apr 2 07:57 UTC 1999 |
re 18:
I don't want a list of all the conferences an item is linked to,
I just want to find out which conference it is linked from. Pico
Span ought to be able to do this. It prints "<linked Item> and
finds the text from the original conference. Couldn't it just
say "<linked from Coop>" or whatever?
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davel
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response 24 of 38:
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Apr 2 12:30 UTC 1999 |
No. It implements linked items as Unix hard links - 2 directory entries for
a single file (or more than 2, obviously). Once the second directory entry
is created, there's no difference between them. The system tracks how many
links (directory entries) a file has, and Picospan just checks whether this
number is greater than 1. The reason Unix works this way is that if you
remove a link (dir entry) it has to know whether it's all right to throw away
the data as well as the link. (See man ln and experiment on a file in your
home directory, if you want to find out how it works.) But Picospan does
*not* "find the text from the original conference" except at the time the
fairwitness links it ... and then it's not the *text* it finds.
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