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.

   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.
 

...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!)

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)

Have you tried Elm since then?  Was it easier to use than regular "mail"?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

  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....

I know how to auto-detect ansi... ;-)  I can give you the info if you want.
just let me know.

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.

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?

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.

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.)

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.

re : remmers somewhere back there...
        Thanks, I fixed that option on telix.. I just need to test it now.

   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?

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. 

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?

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?

Re #21: Just change the word "dumb" to "ansi-new" or "ansi", and it
should work just fine.

Re # 23: Will do thanks for the help...

perhaps, to keep the people who need help, instead of general being agora,
it should be info.

   Mathews idea about joining the info conference sounds good.  This
touches upon changing the text in the newuser information data file,
nu.info, but thats fodder for another item.

r
Now that have ansi and it doesn't seem to have crashed my .profile file or anyt
anything drastic like that, what do I do with it (excuse the dumb new user
question, but someone has to ask them right?) Also is there an easier to
to use text editor that I can get somewhere? I'm a point and click
Mac type user and all these Unix scripts and commands are a pain in the
#*%%%#!.

Well, the way the editor was set up in Picospan was confusing at first,
but I think we fixed that, and I got plenty of help in getting it set up
to what I was used to.  Have editors been giving people a lot of trouble
lately?

There are two full screen editors on Grex: vi and jove.
jove is the one I use. It is based on emacs, a common full-screen editor.
It uses lots of control characters and escape characters so you need a
tutorial to get started on it. Fortunately...there is one!  Type
!teachjove
at the bbs prompt
(drop the ! if you're at a unix prompt)
It'll never compare with mouse-aware editors for ease-of-use, but it's very
powerful and uses only ascii, so you can edit on remote machines with it.
Lot's of people like vi instead, it all depends what you're used to.

BTW: Once you know what you're doing, you can use either of these fine
editors to form bbs responses and create mail, but that's another chapter.

Kent slipped in #28. No, editors haven't given me any trouble recently,
anyone else?

What confuses me, is the answers to my questions ;-)! What often happens,
is that in answer to my "dumb" question, the answer offers me umpteen
alternatives, all couched in unix jargon, and concludes "it all depends
on what you're used to" (with apologies to srw :)). Even when only one
answer is tendered, others chime in with other ways of doing it. I
throw up my hands (if nothing else). The way I learn new techniques best
is (since this is all manipulation), a 1 2 3 ... example, step by step,
and *no one* suggesting a different way. If all you gurus could develop
such simple scenarios to answer simple questions, newcomers would at least
learn to do simple things one, but perfectly satisfactory, way. Now,
will someone please tell me how to:
1. create a file.
2. write to a file.
3. destroy a file.
4. upload from here to a file.
5. download from there to here.
Remember! Only one way! Step by step! (And don't argue in public with
each other.)
,

The non-Unix guru's answers:

(1)  I know there's a command to create a file without putting anything
     in it, but the name escapes me.
(2)  Which editor are you using?  For vi, it would be ":w".
(3)  rm filename       (from PicoSpan, !rm filename)
(4)  For Zmodem, rz (or !rz, you get the idea)
     For kermit, type kermit, then receive
(5)  For Zmodem, sz filename
     For kermit, type kermit, then send filename
(Note that if you're using a DOS machine, you'll want to use the
-a option to add linefeeds to any text files, hence rz -a  or
sz -a filename)

Just a hunch - you're used to MTS, aren't you?

re #31:  That's like saying, "Tell me how to live my life. Only one way!
Step by step! (And don't argue in public with each other.)"  :)

   Rane, you can create a file in UNIX most easily with the cat command,
like:  "cat >datafile<return>"  then Control-D and you'll have created a
file.  The "cat >file" is the way to write data into a file as well; just
start typing and when done put a ^D (on its own line) to finish it.  But
you really want to use an editor, I think.

[Item 26 in Agora is now linked as Item 35 in Info.]

The long pause before the login prompt was most disheartening
when I first showed up.

Re #29: There's actually a third editor available, called Pico.  It's
the editor that comes with the Pine mailreader (which is not installed
here).  It was designed to be very easy for new users to use, and
because of that design goal it has menus, easy-to-remember commands,
and so forth.  I'd like people to try it out, and give us feedback
on whether you think it would be a reasonable default editor for
newusers.  (Note that it's a fullscreen editor, so you need to have
your terminal type set correctly.)

And the lack (now remedied) of information about what to *say* at a login
prompt when you have never yet logged in.  Whoever finally added the
suggestion to log in as newuser, a month or so ago, thank you.

(I'd like to put in a vote for both Pine and Pico... now that
I've used Mail and Elm, Pine wins.)

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss