Grex Info Conference

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Grex Info Item 13: What are your options? How to find out.
Entered by davel on Tue Dec 8 11:46:22 UTC 1992:

To learn what *all* your options are, at *any* PicoSpan command prompt,
there's a help item summarizing them.  A few of the commands won't be
available to you unless you're a fairwitness.  Obtain the list by typing
"Help summary" at a PicoSpan prompt.  Be prepared to capture the information
to a printer or something, as there's a lot.

Why should you want to do this?  Because many times the prompt only gives
a selection of the options.  For example, at the "respond or pass" prompt
you can also enter "forget" (to banish the item from your screen forever
after) or "pseudo" (to respond but with a custom name of your choosing -
your username (login ID) still appears, though).

11 responses total.

#1 of 11 by morel on Tue Dec 8 15:44:50 1992:

And if you're lazy like me, you can often abbreviate pico commands, though
knowing the exact abbreviation that is acceptible can be a trick.  The 
obvious ones are r for read, and p for pass.  There's also a postpone
command, which allows you to leave the item you're reading and come back
to it next time as though you hadn't read any of it in that session.  (I
find this useful if there's an item with a lot of activity that I wan't to
keep up on, but don't have the time at that particular session.  So I
interrupt out of the item, which gets me back to the "respond or pass?"
prompt then postpone.)  Since "p" is already taken by pass, you need to
type "po" to postpone.  I assume there's "f" for forget, bus as I don't
often forget items, I find I usually type the whole command.  Then there's
"b" for browse.  If you want to browse only "brandnew" items, since "b" (and
"br" for that matter" are reserved for browse, you need to type "b bra" for
the shortest abbreviation.  (No comments please, this is just an
observation on my part.)  And on and on it goes...

#2 of 11 by remmers on Tue Dec 8 16:32:34 1992:

If you type just "help" (with no arguments) at a Picospan prompt, you
should get the full list of commands available at that prompt.  Typing
it at the "Respond or pass" gives you a somewhat different list than
typing it at the "Ok".

#3 of 11 by davel on Tue Dec 8 19:37:38 1992:

I believe that the "help summary" described in #0 indicates the acceptable
abbreviations (by dividing the word with an underbar (_) after the shortest
acceptable one).  Other help items also do this, but I shortened my typing
for the commands quite a bit after printing off the complete summary.

#4 of 11 by remmers on Tue Dec 8 23:15:45 1992:

I've found "help summary" to be an invaluable reference.  In addition
to listing every Picospan command under the sun, it tells you about
all the options that are available in defining item and response
headers (iseps and rseps).  Picospan has an exceptionally rich
command structure and degree of configurability.

#5 of 11 by popcorn on Wed Dec 9 04:16:03 1992:

This response has been erased.

#6 of 11 by popcorn on Wed Dec 9 04:29:09 1992:

This response has been erased.

#7 of 11 by davel on Wed Dec 9 11:48:06 1992:

I happened on it purely by chance.  Then I couldn't find it when I wanted
it, asked (over in Agora) because I thought it was "help misc" which is
listed but seems to be broken.  Remmers straightened me out.  If I weren't
buried in paper I'd use it a lot more - but you could say it's actually
how I learned to talk to Pico.

#8 of 11 by mpanda on Sat Apr 24 15:09:38 1999:

how do we talk

#9 of 11 by mpanda on Sat Apr 24 15:10:17 1999:

read 13

#10 of 11 by remmers on Mon Apr 26 18:08:08 1999:

How recursive!

#11 of 11 by davel on Tue Apr 27 10:28:50 1999:

Re 8: Hey, the last response was 1992.  I don't think over 6.5 years of
silence is unduly talkative.

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