How do I go about activating whatever system it is that makes text
stop scrolling when the screen is full ?
Thanks in advance for any help provided.

32 responses total.

You create a file named .cfonce in your home directory with the line:

define pager more

This will cause the output of the bbs to go through the more pager,
which will stop the output every 24 lines.  To look at the next 24 lines
you just hit the space bar. To quit, you hit "q".

If you'd like I'll create this file for you.

Will 'define pager less' work, too?

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Ummm, must be a new, newuser program running, cause the   .cfonce   file
is already created, and has a single line that says:
  # here is where you can put PicoSpan customization
  
and so it only needs to be edited with either of the above suggestions,
but not both .......
  

If the "more" pager drives you nuts like it does me, you can also
use the <ctrl-q> <ctrl-s> function.

When you want to stop the text, type <ctrl-q>, then, to make it start scrolling
again, type <ctrl-s>

(Or do I have it backwards?  My keyboard has a <pause> key...

You do have it backwards.  ctl-s is xoff, tells the other end to stop sending.
ctl-q is xon, says it's OK to send again.

That's what I do.  because picospan takes the extra time to pipe it 
through your pager, that creates so much overhead time, if you've got more
than one or two responses, you'll just sit there forever before you can hit
interrupt or such, and type forget if you don't want to read that item.

Thanks to all.  I've been using Ctr-S and Ctr-Q and it's driving me buggy
since I don.t always stop the scrolling in time and then have to go
back through my screen buffer, usually just to get a couple of lines I
missed.

Sounds like the pager is just right then - do it.

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Ummmmmmm, what if you don't have a PageUp key? I can't find the scrollback
facility in the Kermit I'm using, Kermit 387, btw.

Hm.  I don't find Procomm's page-back buffer slow or clunky.  The only
thing is that sometimes things like elm get confused & overwrite lines
before I get them read; with the shareware version of Procomm, the
read-back buffer display shows me the written-over version.

I agree with popcorn - the ProComm buffer scrollback is "clunky and slow".
Also, as far as I can tell, one can't capture selections from it, as
one can do with PCTIE (to MTS), or with Mac comm apps. I do most of my
communication with the Mac, as a result. ProComm (shareware) doesn't
even support a mouse. With respect to !elm (and !pine, for that matter),
I find that I can't scroll back at all to see what came before, unless
I include the message I am answering in my reply, and use the editor.
That's a nuisance. 

What happened to pg?

The non-shareware Procomm (PCPLUS) supports several more scrollback buffer
functions, including writing sections to file, FWIW.

I should have paid the extra for PLUS, instead of just registering
2.4.2 (or whatever it was). I suppose I could upgrade for not much.

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I use procomm 2.4.2 (shareware) and you can use alt-G to save a screen-
full of stuff in the scrollback buffer to procomm.img

That's been upgraded to 2.4.3 (in 1989 - cutting edge!). They added
Ymodem-G.

2.4.2 was intended to be the last shareware release, I think, when they
decided to create Procomm Plus and market it in other ways.  They
eventually added ymodem-G and maybe cleaned up a couple more minor things,
calling it 2.4.3, but I believe that once Plus came out there was never any
intention of doing further enhancements of the shareware version.  So it's
not cutting-edge, but it's pretty cheap & pretty good, as far as it goes.

helppppppp!!!!!! I'm on an old tandy 1000hx now and the program (bitcom)
seems to like to double space everything!!@ does anyone know how to stop mit
????????????????

What you typed looks fine here, to me anyway.  When you say "double space"
do you mean:
- empty lines between lines you type?
- blank spaces between letters you type?
- duplicates of letters you type?

If the first, you may be sending a carriage return AND a newline as your
line terminator.  This is normal for DOS but not for most of the rest of
the world.  Depending on what terminal you're emulating, it would be one
or the other (but I'd say a carriage return is the likely one).

If the third, you're set to HDX (half duplex) instead of FDX (full duplex).
Change that & you should be OK.

If the second, I have no idea.  Sorry.

ok...how do I change between HDX and FDX????

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Right - but text displayed from the other end would look normal.  Sorry
if I wasn't clear.  (And I know people who can't keep straight which
is half & which is full.  There Are Reasons for the usage, but just think
"less is more".)

I'm having a problem with my pager (hit space for more, or whatever it says)
cutting out a line of every response.  It overwrites the last line onf the
screen.  This amounts to me only getting 23 or every 24 lines of bbs.  any
idea what i can do to fix this?

That's usually caused by a mismatch between the number of lines
Grex thinks your screen has and the number of lines it actually
has. The command 

        !stty rows N

where N is the number of lines on your screen, should fix it.

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(Right, telling Grex that you have 480 lines would foul up your
display real good.)

If you want to *check* what Grex thinks your screen size is, rather than
just setting it, the command         stty -a      (or    !stty -a
from a lynx, bbs, or menu prompt) gives that along with a whole bunch
of other, more cryptic, information.

The "resize" command might work to set your screen size
correctly. It sends an escape sequence to your terminal asking
it how many rows and columns it has. If it receives a response,
"resize" sets the number of rows and columns accordingly, in
effect doing a "stty rows N cols M" without your having to
fill in the N and M. From a bbs prompt you can try

                !resize

or the somewhat arcane

                !eval `resize`

Not all terminal emulators are smart enough to respond to the
size inquiry though, so you won't know if this works until you
try it.

Some terminals will also tell the host what type of terminal
they are (vt100, vt220, etc.) in response to an inquiry sequence.
I wrote a program called "checktty" that's installed on Grex. It 
exploits this feature and can be used to set your terminal type.
Using it in conjunction with "resize", you may be able to set
your terminal type and screen size automatically when you log in,
without actually having to know what it is. This is useful if you
use more than one terminal program. I have the following code in
my .login file (csh/tcsh syntax; would have to be modified if
your shell uses .profile as its startup file):

    if ($TERM == "dialup") then
        echo -n "Checking terminal type..."
        set term=`checktty`
        echo $TERM
    endif
    eval `resize`

For most of the communications programs I use, this causes Grex
to set my terminal type and screen size correctly both with
dialup and telnet connections. (The "if" in the above causes
"checktty" to be bypassed if you're coming in via telnet.  For
telnet connections, you normally don't need to use "checktty"
because your telnet client is supposed to tell the host what
type of terminal it is. Some telnet clients screw this up,
however.)

(The only comm. program I use that doesn't respond to a terminal
type inquiry correctly is Procomm Plus for Windows. It's not the
latest version -- they may have fixed it in more recent
version.)

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