John Orr wrote:
Hi Tony, (and others),
Thanks for your (tireless) input, yes, Ctrl-C is certainly a good suggestion,
that works consistently, with no error bells/flashes, no matter how far through
the messages you are.
And I totally agree that it's good to make it easy to know when there is more
output to come or not, by having a different 'end' message.
Thanks also to the other guys who've responded, raising related points.
I suppose I'm biased - after getting hooked on vim, it seemed natural to alias unix 'more' to instead use unix 'less' - so I can get the vim style cursor movement commands.
Hence I'm rather accustomed to the unix 'less' manner of scrolling text/messages. I guess the current vim approach is a melding of both Unix 'more' and 'less',
which certainly has it's own advantages. Eg - unix "more" exits at the end of the messages in a similar way to vim (the key difference being that with vim, the messages all disappear,
whilst with more, you've probably got them scrolled up your terminal window to
review).
Undoubtedly there would be both "more" devotees and "less" devotees using vim - so what we've currently got is probably a good compromise.
It may be better, perhaps, to have an option to enable fully compatible versions of one or the other. But that's probably a lot of work.
For now, I've got my code patch (not that it's nice to have oddly patched
code). When I get some time I'll see if I can't find a similar change to
address the other issue raised here, unless someone gets there before me.
Thank you all for your responses.
John
Personally I use both "less" and "more" -- for different purposes. For
instance, with a long "ls" listing, using --color makes "less" stumble, but
"more" shows the colors with no problem. In general, I use:
- less
- when there is a long listing which I want to be able to scroll back and
forth, or to search with a / command
- not when there are interspersed ANSI-like escape sequences as in "ls
--color".
- more
- if I want to discard the listing after the first screenful, as when I
use "src/vim --version |more" between "make" and "make install" of a Vim
recompile.
- if I know that I won't have to scroll back or search
- if I want the last screenful to remain visible above the next shell prompt
- if there are ANSI-like color escapes
But Vim is more versatile than either. It even allows you to capture the
output of a "display" command like ":ver" or, with no parameters, ":au" or
":hi"; but you have to set up the capture in advance (see ":help :redir").
Best regards,
Tony.
--
REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system?
SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that
the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can
carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away."
I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kind
of chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge to
do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of
ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we
need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political
career be being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but
that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I
can't help it.
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
