I'm currently using the pager "more" for the bbs.  Sometimes I see a 
"more" prompt that tells what percent of the text has already been seen.
Is that pager available for use in a .cfonce file?

40 responses total.

I think that's just more.  When it's getting its input from a pipe, which I
think applies in this case, it can't tell how much input there's going to
be.  When you use more on a regular file (possibly with some other conditions)
it knows how much more there is.

It's possible that you might define your picospan pager in such a way as to
get such a progress report.  I'm not sure that it's possible, but if it *is*
one almost-certain consequence would be an appreciable delay when you start
to read something before anything is displayed.  I suspect this would quickly
outweigh any possible gain from knowing how much more there is.

Good question and good answer.  I've always wondered about this myself.

Thank you.  I just read the man page - but it kind of stuck, because it made
sense regarding *why* (which the man page didn't address, but which seemed
obvious as soon as I wondered).

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... and since the pager and the original command are running at the same time,
the pager can't tell what percent complete things are - new input may be added
at any time, up until the command terminates.

OK, related question:  I'm using more as my pager for the bbs too.  Are
there other programs besides more that would make good pagers?

Try less.

In "unix", "less" is more than "more".

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That's not democratic or cooperative. In democracies and cooperatives, you
are required to endure twits.

The version of twit I use is in /u/jon/bin/twit.  The documentation
is somewhere in one of those directories.

Re 10 - Yes, but I'm not a democracty.

Yeah, I thought this was a Tyranny.

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How 'bout $60 per year?

If you send me $60, you get to vote immediately.

heh.

Here's what I have.. do a define pager /u/yourusername/mymore after copying
the file /u/jared/jmore to /u/yourusername/mymore

This will show you your precent more.

There's only one problem with it.. it goes 
:::::::::::::::
/tmp/mre.#####
:::::::::::::::
at the beginning of it all.. that's the only problem there is with it.
And it asks you to tell it to start.  I dunno if there is a way
around that.

anyone who can get rid of that ANNOYING headder, lemme know.

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(Gives new meaning to the term "Trojan Horse" all right.)

At least with a script you can look at it, make sure it's innocent, and
copy it to your own dir & use it, knowing no one except root people can
change it while you're not looking.  (And changes could be innocent and
still produce disaster, if you're depending on a script's behavior to
remain the same.)  It's an even worse idea to depend on a compiled program
from someone else's dir, since you can't check what it does.

Re: 20, isn't this why some Unix books say that putting '.' as the
first item in a path statement is a bad idea?

Related.  Imagine this scenario:  You change to /tmp (say), where lots of
people have write access.  You run ls -l.  Some bozo has put in /tmp a
script called ls which does rm -r $HOME.  If your current dir is in your
path ahead of /bin or any other official ls, you wind up deleting your
entire directory, & everything under it.  (bozo couldn't do it directly,
since he didn't have access - but *you* can.)  *Very* bad, since we don't
have any way to do backups here right now.

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backup manpower is available, chasened and "edjimicated," but honestly
available.

TS, when did you go into training to serve as a tape controller?  That being,
if I understood, the missing item.

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Why is everyone drifting?  I just want to know how to get rid of the
ugly headder thing.

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I don't think cat it doing it.  I looked at the file produced by
cat, and it didn't contain the header.  The man page for more
makes reference to headers being printed if the standard output
is not a terminal, but in Jared's script, the standard output
most definitely is a printer, so I'm puzzled.

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(oops, make that "most definitely is a terminal" in last line of #31.)

Is #28 correct

At least, the nonexistence of a tape controller was mentioned.  In the
absence of hardware for backing up, the issue of personnel is moot.

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I have trouble reading stuff while it is scrolling. I like the way pine
displays the text of long messages.  What happens is you get a screen full
and you hit space and the next screen full gets repainted over the old
one so you can keep reading the last couple lines of the old screen or
the first couple lines of the new screen while characters are being
transmitted and there's no scrolling.  I want PicoSpan to work the same way.

I put define pager "less -M -c" in my .cfonce and it was OK except that I
had to use q to quit less every time it was invoked.

To solve the q to quit problem, I changed it to define pager "less -M -c -E" 
which was OK except that it introduced some unwanted scrolling.  At the
point where I used to have to hit q to quit, PicoSpan would skip a line
before dropping me at the next prompt (Respond or pass? OK:, or something
like that) and there would be enough scrolling to lose a couple of lines
off the top of the screen.  This was especially a problem if there were
only a couple of lines displayed followed quickly by a bunch of blank lines.

Excuse me for rambling so much, but I'm now ready to ask a question or 3.

Is there a way to make less stop filling the screen with trailing blank
lines?  Maybe I can tell less that my screen is a few lines shorter than
it is so that if there is some scrolling, stuff won't be dumped off the
top of the screen.  Or is there a better way to prevent scrolling?

Hmm.  I just tried defining my pager to "less -M -c -E", and am not
seeing the behavior you describe.  It repaints the screen perfectly
with no extra scrolling.

I rather like that method of screen repainting, for the same
reasons you do.  A big drawback for me though is that previous
screens don't get saved in my scrollback buffer, so I'll probably
stick with "more".

I get frustrated by the pine and pico repainting, as I can't scroll
back. Especially, it isn't all there when I leave, so I can't recall
what I did. But this is only a minor nuisance, so I'm not seeking 
something different.

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