> > > *There were 24 lines per page unless over-ridden on the command line.* > *The tool was real unix tool, lean and mean with only a few arguments.* > *It was far less functional than either 'more' or 'less' but it did**let > you page through a file or STDIN nicely*
Yep, that's the sort of pager I imagined would have been present on all terminals. I can't imagine how people coped with using `ls -l` in directories with more files than their screen had lines (unless one was fastidious with their use of grep(1)…) It just feels unrealistic for a terminal not to have a pager. Then again, our TTYs these days have full-screen editing, 24-bit colour codes <https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728>, Fraktur lettering, and God knows what else I'm forgetting... Wish I had access to a "real" dumb terminal so I could use it and never complain about this MacBook's crappy screen ever again... On Wed, 3 Jul 2019 at 09:46, Damian McGuckin <dami...@esi.com.au> wrote: > On Wed, 3 Jul 2019, John Gardner wrote: > > >> *Some terminals, the Tek 401x series especially, could* *be configured > >> to tell the host to stop sending text on* *a "page full" condition. > >> Some sent the proper RS-232**hardware signals, some sent > >> <ctrl-s>/<ctrl-x>.* > > > > Really? That's interesting. What did <ctrl-s> do? On the terminal > emulators > > I have on hand at the moment, none of them are responding or behaving > > differently. > > > > I always assumed terminals had some form of paging ability, no matter how > > rudimentary, but I see how wrong I was.... > > At the risk of showing my age, in the very LATE 1970s, there was a program > at UNSW called 'pg' which did paging on CRT screens. There wete 24 lines > per page unless over-ridden on the command line. The tool was real unix > tool, lean and mean with only a few arguments. It was far less functional > than either 'more' or 'less' but it did let you page through a file or > STDIN nicely. You had to pipe things through 'col' first in some cases and > 'pg' generally played nicely with half-line motions from memory (which is > really being stretched). I liked 'pg'. More seems overkill. A shame we > lost it. I think there is another tool out there are several tools called > 'pg' in the last 20 years but it is not the same as the original. One is > not even a pager but I cannot remember what it is. > > There is a lean+mean tool called 'pg' on Github but it is no relation to > the one to which I refer. It is super, super basic. > > Regards - Damian > > Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037 > Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not wanted > here > Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present > employer >
