|
Grex > Info > #35: What things need confused you about Grex when you were first on? | |
|
| Author |
Message |
steve
|
|
What things need confused you about Grex when you were first on?
| 
Apr 17 22:18 UTC 1993 |
This is primarily for new users to Grex, but us old farts might
be able to help out, too.
What things confused you about Grex the most when you were first
here? For that matter, what things still confuse you?
Grex has been around long enough that we need to start thinking
of the "little things" that might not be so big to us anymore, but
might be a real stumbling block to those who are just starting out.
Also, things that might be able to use a little improvement
should be commented on...
So fire away and don't be shy. Lets improve the system!
|
| 82 responses total. |
steve
|
|
response 1 of 82:
|
Apr 17 22:19 UTC 1993 |
I know that a lot of people who are seriously confused won't
see this. So if you've helped a new user out with something, don't
forget to pipe up.
|
mta
|
|
response 2 of 82:
|
Apr 18 02:25 UTC 1993 |
...when I was a new user? Well, it's been awhile, but I remember having no
clue how to do anything--or even how to find help. (The online help
that Picospan provides seems to have been written by a computer for a computer.
(sorry, marcus, but it's true!)
|
matthew
|
|
response 3 of 82:
|
Apr 18 02:51 UTC 1993 |
I recently talked with a newuser, and what he's had the most trouble
with is using the mail system (he found the help commands to be
confusing) and also just "moving" around in PicoSpan ie getting into
conferences, getting out of them, changing to and from conf, mail, & chat.
He bounced around for a while in these places feeling very lost because
he couldn't figure out what meant what.
(I also remember having trouble with mail when I first signed up, I
just tried commands on trail and error until I figured out what
they meant)
|
mju
|
|
response 4 of 82:
|
Apr 18 03:18 UTC 1993 |
Have you tried Elm since then? Was it easier to use than regular "mail"?
|
robh
|
|
response 5 of 82:
|
Apr 18 04:16 UTC 1993 |
Yes, I usually tell new users to try Elm instead of "mail".
I remember one new user long ago asking me frantically, "How do I
get the cool ANSI graphics on my machine?" Or words to that effect.
Before I could answer, he went and signed off. Hmph. Anyway, a
comprehensive list of terminal types and how to set them would probably
be a good idea.
|
mju
|
|
response 6 of 82:
|
Apr 18 05:42 UTC 1993 |
One idea we are toying with is to make "ansi" or "vt100" the default
terminal type. It seems that most terminal/communications software
supports that, and even defaults to it in a lot of cases. People
who are using "weird" hardware are more likely to know how to
tell Grex how to deal with it, I would think. Whereas a lot of people
seem to say, "Terminal? I'm not using a terminal, I'm using
a PC," when asked for their "terminal type". Perhaps newuser could
do some simple tests with ANSI escape codes (clear the screen, position
the cursor, print some text bold/underlined, etc.) and then ask the
user if it came out okay. If it did, then it should be safe to set
the terminal type to some sort of minimal "ansi" emulation. Something
that's at least enough to let them use Pine, the Pico editor, "talk",
Elm, Nethack, etc.
|
srw
|
|
response 7 of 82:
|
Apr 18 14:08 UTC 1993 |
I second that. It's clear that today's newuser is not clearly
communicating its request when it gets bogus answers like that. As a
first step, lets try rewording the question so that we won't see "I'm
not using a terminal, I'm using a PC". ansi default is a good idea.
Mentioning vt100 as a possibilty is also, IMO.
I remember when I started the biggest problem I had was getting grex to
understand my baud rate. I was coming in at 2400 on a 9600 modem. By
default it tried to negotiate MNP with Grex. This failed of course,
but Grex took it as a break and cycled down to 1200 leaving me with
garbage. My terminal emulator at the time couldn't send break, so I
had lots of trouble. Now I prevent the problem with \N in my dialup
string (\N may vary, check your modem manual) which suppresses the MNP
negotiation.
|
mju
|
|
response 8 of 82:
|
Apr 18 16:19 UTC 1993 |
Okay, I've written up a new termcap definition called "ansi-new".
This includes what I see as the "minimal" set of ANSI operations
that are commonly implemented. If you have communications software
that emulates (or claims to emulate) "ANSI" or "ANSI-BBS" or something
of that ilk, I'd appreciate it if you would try this termcap out.
Let me know whether it works okay with Nethack, talk, vi, Elm,
etc. -- all of the common screen-oriented programs. Especially let
me know if it does something like print garbage or escape codes on
your screen, or put your emulator into a weird state, or something
like that. We're looking for the widest possible number of tests
here, since I'm hoping that this will be a reasonable default termcap
to use for new users.
|
kentn
|
|
response 9 of 82:
|
Apr 18 19:02 UTC 1993 |
What confused me most about terminal types when I first logged in to
Grex was the multitude of vt100 entries to choose from. All I knew
was that my comm program would emulate a vt100. Anything you could do
to make the terminal type choice easier would help.
|
jared
|
|
response 10 of 82:
|
Apr 18 19:15 UTC 1993 |
ansi-new... I'll try that... sometimes with telix, I get the chars erased
on the screen as I backspace. :( Sorta stinks. Then I have to ^L vi to
get it to redraw the screen.
|
power
|
|
response 11 of 82:
|
Apr 18 20:23 UTC 1993 |
Do we have the source for the newuser program? If we do, it is possible to
automatically detect ANSI, although I'm not quite positive what one sends to
do so....
|
jared
|
|
response 12 of 82:
|
Apr 18 20:36 UTC 1993 |
I know how to auto-detect ansi... ;-) I can give you the info if you want.
just let me know.
|
mju
|
|
response 13 of 82:
|
Apr 18 20:48 UTC 1993 |
Re #10: The problem with erased characters is a Telix problem, not
a termcap problem. The difficulty is that Telix defaults to
"destructive backspace", whereas all vt100 termcaps default to
"nondestructive backspace" (because that's what a real vt100 does).
You need to go into the "Terminal Settings" menu (Alt-O, then T,
I believe) and set "Destructive Backspace" to "Off".
I don't think we should try to gratuitiously do ANSI autodetection.
It can cause a lot of problems with terminals that *aren't* ANSI-
compatible, as well as screw up royally a terminal that is sort-of
ANSI-compatible-but-not-really. I've had lots of problems with
ANSI autodetection and my xterm vt100 emulator. I'd feel a lot
more comfortable if the newuser program asked a question like,
Are you using an ANSI or VT100-compatible terminal emulation
program? (If you're not sure, say "maybe" and I'll run a few
tests.)
If the user says "yes", then the termcap gets set to "ansi-new" or
whatever the default is. If the user says "no", then they get
the current termcap-selection code. If they say "maybe", then
newuser uses ANSI codes to clear the screen, write some text in
bold/standout, position the cursor, etc, then tells the user what
it *should* have looked like and asks them if it did. If they
say yes, then they get "ansi-new". If not, then they get "dumb"
(or maybe get the current termcap-selection code), along with
a warning or notice that they should maybe contact a staff member
for help in figuring out what termcap to use.
|
eric2
|
|
response 14 of 82:
|
Apr 18 21:57 UTC 1993 |
I set my terminal type to ansi when I logged on for the first time and had
no idea what I was doing...now I'm stuck typing in vt100 every time and I
don't know how to change it to the default. What's this Elm thing you're
talking about?
|
mju
|
|
response 15 of 82:
|
Apr 19 00:34 UTC 1993 |
You can change the default by editing your .profile script and
changing the "ansi" to "vt100" in the "tset" line. We are
working now on developing some sort of menu-driven "change"
command to allow you to more easily change parameters such as
your terminal type, interrupt character, etc. (without having
to learn an editor).
Elm is a menu-driven mail reading program. You can run it by
typing "!elm" from a Pico prompt. Note that since it uses a
screen-oriented interface, you must have a properly-set TERM
variable.
|
davel
|
|
response 16 of 82:
|
Apr 19 01:00 UTC 1993 |
The menu-driven parameter-change thing would make a *lot* of difference
for users who want to conference but may not want to be Unix experts, IMO.
The ansi-new setting is nicer than the plain ansi with my current setup -
Procomm 2.42 (shareware) in ansi-bbs mode. vi and elm both tend to do
strange things under "ansi" - vi sometimes indenting the first line (or
many lines) in the display, and also often overwriting displayed text with
blanks. elm often leaves old prompts/messages, mixing them with current
ones. (A quick test under ansi-new shows no trace of the problems with vi,
and I think elm cleared the screen at points where maybe it thought it was
clearing a region under plain ansi.) Hope this is clear enough.
My own feeling a year or so ago, as a new user, was like Misti's. The help
system made it too hard to find what I wanted, and I was unable to figure
out what to do to make much of anything work (including help). Some messages
have been added since then, but I really think Picospan, for all its
virtues, is novice-hostile - novitiate being to conferencing systems in
general, maybe. A prompt saying "ok:" is not very informative, and the
prompt I was initially faced with (I *think* it said "prompt? what prompt?"
but maybe that was later) was only worse. Only the fact that I desperately
needed help with some Unix things made me persevere.
However, once you *start* to figure it out, the resources are there to
do most of what is needed. It may be hard to find them, and especially
to know they exist so you even start to look, but they're there. People
who know Unix have a big head start; people who don't want to (this is *not*
me) are at a big disadvantage. Some of this is unavoidable; a complex &
powerful system either presupposes some background or drowns you in babytalk.
(The friend who provided me with my first pass at a Mac - first & only -
can tell you I found it incredibly user-hostile. There I was with a menu,
but he forgot to tell me what the mouse was for, & he wasn't there to
help me, either.)
|
mju
|
|
response 17 of 82:
|
Apr 19 04:09 UTC 1993 |
To drift a bit, I know that I found my first time with a Mac somewhat
confusing, too. I did know how to use a mouse, and some of the
elementary commands with it (double-click to run a program, single-click
to select, how to use pull-down menus, etc.). But to this day
I still haven't figured out how to do something that's pretty easy
on a PC: download a file from a BBS, de-StuffIt or whatever, and
get it executable. Of course, I was playing around two years ago
with a rather underpowered Mac Plus, and things may have gotten
considerably better since then. I also didn't have any documentation
for it, and only about an hour a day to play with it (this was one
of the computers in the Huron computer lab, back when they still let
students use the modem and phone line there).
Perhaps we should convince Marcus to add a "verbose mode" to Pico,
or something like it, where you get a 3-line menu or something
instead of a terse prompt. It'll never happen, though.
|
jared
|
|
response 18 of 82:
|
Apr 19 04:59 UTC 1993 |
re : remmers somewhere back there...
Thanks, I fixed that option on telix.. I just need to test it now.
|
steve
|
|
response 19 of 82:
|
Apr 19 22:50 UTC 1993 |
OK, so I think we all agree that terminal type definition help
and a simple way to change parameters would be good things.
What *other* things had you really confused?
|
raven
|
|
response 20 of 82:
|
Apr 19 23:36 UTC 1993 |
I was pretty confused (and still am a little confused), but I figured out
quite a few things especialy about mail once I found join info. It seems
to me that during the new user login sequence that newusers should be
STRONGLY ENCOURAGED to go to join info.
|
raven
|
|
response 21 of 82:
|
Apr 20 00:21 UTC 1993 |
This is a questions about the answer in # 15 about setting the default term
in the .profile, I did manage to get in to the file and find the tset line,
and it had -s, -m, and term type was dumb. How do I cahange this to ansi?
Also note I'm very new to Unix, so please make the explination as simple as
possible. Also any idea on a time frame when all this might be menu driven?
|
robh
|
|
response 22 of 82:
|
Apr 20 00:32 UTC 1993 |
Another thing I've noticed from new users who write to me - they really
don't know what the write program is doing. One user asked me if I was
a real person. (No, I'm Eliza. What would you like to talk about? You
seem very concerned about your terminal settings.) Another one I
recall sent a "hello?" and then hung up. Perhaps we should explain
that, unlike a computer, we can only react with human reflexes.
What explanation is given to new people about writing to others?
|
mju
|
|
response 23 of 82:
|
Apr 20 01:53 UTC 1993 |
Re #21: Just change the word "dumb" to "ansi-new" or "ansi", and it
should work just fine.
|
raven
|
|
response 24 of 82:
|
Apr 20 02:50 UTC 1993 |
Re # 23: Will do thanks for the help...
|