Re: more or less Newbies?
On Mon, 23 Mar 1998 lucier@cow-net.com wrote:
> Quite honestly I can't think of any DOS, Windows or OS/2 text file viewer
> program I've used over the last 10 years that didn't have the simple
> features of search and page up/down and backscroll. I couldn't believe my
> senses weren't playing tricks on me the first time I installed Debian Linux
> and found out the default file viewer didn't include page up/down! <grin>
Let me see, 10 years ago. Must be a file viewer under dos then.
Uhmm, like: c:\COMMAND\MORE.COM ? Yes, what a featureful pager. <sigh>
More is a lot older and is far more useful than you are suggesting.
Actually, if you had tried to press "?" in more, you would have seen the
help screen. And indeed, it should be possible to page backwards in more.
It even supports searching for "regular expressions". Try to get a windows
program to do that for you.
If you use the more program on a plain file, it will behave as it should
and it will allow you to page backwards. The fact that it doesn't seem to
work right as a pager for man (at least that's what it looks like on my
system) is a bug, maybe in more, maybe in man.
Please don't make a little bug like this into a big issue. Instead, try to
find out if it is a bug indeed (i.e. read manpages etc. to check if you
actually know what you're doing.) Try to find out what, where and how
about the bug and if you are unable to fix the bug, you can still be
helpful to the Debian project by registering the bug to the bug tracking
system at www.debian.org/Bugs.
> I don't mean to be rude here, but quite honestly this sounds like
> something that may have applied years ago when running resource and
> hardware limited systems. I'll repeat my original statement "> > Quite
> honestly I can't think of any DOS, Windows or OS/2 text file viewer
> program I've used over the last 10 years that didn't have the simple
> features of search and page up/down and backscroll. " If it takes a
> second floppy disk to round out a decent set of emergency programs then
> what's the big deal about that? In fact, IMHO, the benefits gained by
> having access to page up/down/search far outway the limitations
> inflicted by using a text file viewer that will only read in one
> direction, ESPECIALLY in emergency conditions.
You know, newbies are not really expected to be able to solve complicated
emergency situations. That would be unrealistic and unreasonable to ask.
But of course, you are perfectly free to develop a set of fancy,
easy-to-use emergency diskettes. Nobody will want to stop you and they
would be very welcome in the archive undoubtedly. You should also consider
that since nobody has done it before, there might be reasons why people
feel they haven't needed so far.
> Quite honestly if these are the best reasons for not including less as
> the default, IMHO you are deluding yourself as to whether or not you
> know how to use your tools. <Again I don't mean to be rude by saying
> this......my experience with dos, windows and OS/2 over the years shows
> clearly that this reasoning is bogus and outdated. <shruug>)
There are other good reasons why /bin/more is the default: more is the one
true historical pager. While this reason may sound outright silly to you,
there is in fact a lot of sense to this: as a historical tool, it is a
least common denominator of many other derived tools.
Many things in unix work like this: you take a couple of "least common
denominators" and combine them into a bigger utility. Sometimes you'd take
fancier version A as a building block, sometimes B. But everytime, it is
pretty clear what the building blocks are and thus what is actually
happening. In the unix world, this is generally considered a Good
Thing(tm).
For instance, take the vi editor (another fine unix creature that
newbies^H^H^H^Hcomers can't stop complaining about.) To be able to really
appreciate and harness the power of vi editor (the "visual",
screen-oriented editor,) you'd have to learn how to use the ex editor (the
line-oriented counterpart of vi) first. But then you'd have to learn the
ed editor (the one true line-editor) before that. And then, when you know
ed, learning sed (the "scripted" editor) is just another sidestep,
although it also takes you to a whole new dimension of tools. And if you
know sed, you know everything about grep, which means "g/re/p", "Globally
search for Regular Expression and Print it," literally just another sed
command. And awk is just the next station along the way.
Do you see how unix is more than just a computer system? It is almost a
cultural experience ;-) Did I mention that most navigation keys in more,
less and most (another pager) are borrowed from vi? If you know your way
around with the above mentioned tools, you're quite a poweruser. You'll be
able to do things in minutes that would take days in a windows setting.
One can really waste his energies on a mouse. And believe me, if you've
done dos, you might know what a command line is, but you don't know what a
shell is.
Granted, it takes a little time to get to know all these simple and
"unattractive" tools, but once you've learned them, you've probably
learned much more than just that. You've also learned to use and recombine
them, to solved problems creatively. To use your mind and imagination.
You'll appreciate them for their sophistication in their simplicity.
> If you are one of the current Debian developers, then might I politely
> suggest you do some rethinking on this matter. This whole topic was
> started by a chap who was thrilled by finding out the hamm release
> included less as the default.........take a poll and see how many pro
> more responses you get back when asking the questions:
Unfortunately, it doesn't work like this, unless you have a lot of money
and can hire a couple of Debian developers and tell them to do it your
way. While many Debian developers put in countless unpaid hours, if they
had to be paid, in order to make demands about their creations, the more
competent ones might cost over $100/hour.
> "If you were a newbie installing linux for the first time, would you
> rather have a text file viewer that 1) did not include page up/down or
> search functions or 2) a text file viewer that did include those
> functions?"
When I installed linux for the first time, I spent at least a month
reading documentation and howto's that I pulled from the net or read in
books. I never knew to demand a GUI installation, quite on the contrary,
after getting the base system running, I considered configuring X11
(without the nice graphical XF86Config tool) an exciting adventure, for
which I anxiously prepared by reading the larger part of readme's and
manpages.
Believe me, I'm not trying to be pedantic here, I just cannot quite agree
with the growing tendency to demand a plug and play linux installation.
Not that I would not like to see people enjoy such a system if it were
possible, it is just that I do not believe in it. People expecting to get
this sort of thing _will_ be disappointed at some point in time.
What Debian accomplishes is already so great. Friends of mine who do
Slackware and who I consider are more competent with computers than I am
don't have half the stuff running on their boxen that I do. That is mostly
because Debian makes it so easy. When people demand so much more than, I
always feel that they also want the system to do _all_ their understanding
of the matter, thinking about the implementation and decision making. But
you cannot get that. Never. If you are not willing to explore most of
these things by yourself, then you don't like computers!
> "For a default viewer on a system would you rather have a text file
> viewer that 1) did not include page up/down or search functions or 2) a
> text file viewer that did include those functions?"
>
> "On your emergency disk(s) would you rather have a text file viewer that
> 1) did not include page up/down or search functions or 2) a text file
> viewer that did include those functions?"
>
> I don't think a person has to be a genius to figure out what the
> majority of responses are going to be. <grin>
I know another great poll: would you rather 1) have $1.000.000 given to
you or 2) $2.000.000 given to you?
I think I'd choose 2) myself. Now where did that money go?
Cheers,
Joost
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