* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager @ 2020-06-21 22:40 Noel Chiappa 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Noel Chiappa @ 2020-06-21 22:40 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc > From: Michael Siegel > there's no need to write out "less" every time. You can just alias that > to "pg" without causing any harm and save two letters, which is an > improvement for a task that is performed manually rather often. It always surpised me that there wasn't more of this - abbreviating the names of the most-used commands, to minimize typing - or more specifically, run-length encoding them based on how frequently they were used, with the most-used ones given the shortest names. The MIT-DSSR PWB1 system had a pager called just 'p' (source here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/s2/p.c if anyone wants to see it; the man page is dated Apr/77); and 'ls' was tweaked to recognize the command name 'l' as an alias for 'ls -ls'. Of course, aliases didn't exist in the shell back then, which was why the command had to be coded to recognize the short form, and act differently. (And /bin/l was linked to /bin/ls.) 'l' and 'p' are _still_ aliased in my shell,to this day! > I hope it's okay that I chose to reply just to the list address and take > all the other addresses out. 'That's not a bug, that's a feature!' I always delete other addresses when replying to a list, unless I think someone might not be subscribed to that list. Noel ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager @ 2020-06-14 22:52 Warren Toomey 2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton 2020-06-18 12:49 ` Michael Siegel 0 siblings, 2 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Warren Toomey @ 2020-06-14 22:52 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs All, I just received this e-mail from a non-TUHS list member. If you have an answer for Michael, could you reply to him and pop a cc here as well? Thanks, Warren ----- Forwarded message from Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> ----- Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2020 16:37:59 +0200 From: Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> To: wkt@tuhs.org Subject: Origins and life of the pg pager Hi there, I'm trying to find out where the pg pager originated. The research I've done so far vaguely suggests it came with one of the System V versions, though Internet claims it to be “the name of the historical utility on BSD UNIX systems” occasionally.[1] I think System V because the source code of pg.c in the util-linux package says that this utility is “a clone of the System V CRT paging utility.”[2] I'd also like to find out when pg was discarded and if it ever made it into POSIX before that. Linux still has pg to the very day, but none of the current major BSDs (Free/Net/Open) offer it. POSIX 2001, 2004 Edition lists it as an excluded utility.[3] I've not been able to get the text of any prior POSIX documents. It seems they aren't freely available. Any ideas on how to proceed? Best Michael [1] This one's from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pg_(Unix)), but I've also found other sites stating the same. [2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git/tree/text-utils/pg.c [3] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009696899/xrat/xcu_chap04.html ----- End forwarded message ----- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-14 22:52 Warren Toomey @ 2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton 2020-06-15 0:32 ` Nemo Nusquam 2020-06-15 5:41 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2020-06-18 12:49 ` Michael Siegel 1 sibling, 2 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Mary Ann Horton @ 2020-06-14 23:37 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Michael Siegel; +Cc: tuhs Eric Shienbrood at Berkeley wrote "more" around 1979, and it was the standard BSD pager. It was inspired by the --More-- option in the ITS terminal driver at MIT. "pg" did not come from Berkeley. My recollection is that it came from AT&T in response to requests to include "more", which was in exptools at Bell Labs but not in any standard AT&T system. "pg" is not in my UNIX 5.0 manual, but it's in my SVID with the comment "New in System V Release 2". UNIX 5.0 was the AT&T internal pre-release of System V. SVID was the System V Interface Definition from AT&T. Mary Ann On 6/14/20 3:52 PM, Warren Toomey wrote: > All, I just received this e-mail from a non-TUHS list member. If you have > an answer for Michael, could you reply to him and pop a cc here as well? > > Thanks, Warren > > ----- Forwarded message from Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> ----- > > Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2020 16:37:59 +0200 > From: Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> > To: wkt@tuhs.org > Subject: Origins and life of the pg pager > > Hi there, > > I'm trying to find out where the pg pager originated. > > The research I've done so far vaguely suggests it came with one of the > System V versions, though Internet claims it to be “the name of the > historical utility on BSD UNIX systems” occasionally.[1] > > I think System V because the source code of pg.c in the util-linux > package says that this utility is “a clone of the System V CRT paging > utility.”[2] > > I'd also like to find out when pg was discarded and if it ever made it > into POSIX before that. Linux still has pg to the very day, but none of > the current major BSDs (Free/Net/Open) offer it. POSIX 2001, 2004 > Edition lists it as an excluded utility.[3] I've not been able to get > the text of any prior POSIX documents. It seems they aren't freely > available. > > Any ideas on how to proceed? > > > Best > Michael > > > [1] This one's from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pg_(Unix)), > but I've also found other sites stating the same. > > [2] > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git/tree/text-utils/pg.c > > [3] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009696899/xrat/xcu_chap04.html > > ----- End forwarded message ----- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton @ 2020-06-15 0:32 ` Nemo Nusquam 2020-06-15 5:41 ` Lars Brinkhoff 1 sibling, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Nemo Nusquam @ 2020-06-15 0:32 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs For what it's worth, the OpenSolaris pg.c (https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=OpenSolaris_b135/cmd/pg/pg.c) contains the following: /* * Copyright 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. * Use is subject to license terms. */ /* Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T */ /* All Rights Reserved */ N. On 06/14/20 19:37, Mary Ann Horton wrote: > Eric Shienbrood at Berkeley wrote "more" around 1979, and it was the > standard BSD pager. It was inspired by the --More-- option in the ITS > terminal driver at MIT. > > "pg" did not come from Berkeley. My recollection is that it came from > AT&T in response to requests to include "more", which was in exptools > at Bell Labs but not in any standard AT&T system. "pg" is not in my > UNIX 5.0 manual, but it's in my SVID with the comment "New in System V > Release 2". > > UNIX 5.0 was the AT&T internal pre-release of System V. SVID was the > System V Interface Definition from AT&T. > > Mary Ann > > On 6/14/20 3:52 PM, Warren Toomey wrote: >> All, I just received this e-mail from a non-TUHS list member. If you >> have >> an answer for Michael, could you reply to him and pop a cc here as well? >> >> Thanks, Warren >> >> ----- Forwarded message from Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> ----- >> >> Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2020 16:37:59 +0200 >> From: Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> >> To: wkt@tuhs.org >> Subject: Origins and life of the pg pager >> >> Hi there, >> >> I'm trying to find out where the pg pager originated. >> >> The research I've done so far vaguely suggests it came with one of the >> System V versions, though Internet claims it to be “the name of the >> historical utility on BSD UNIX systems” occasionally.[1] >> >> I think System V because the source code of pg.c in the util-linux >> package says that this utility is “a clone of the System V CRT paging >> utility.”[2] >> >> I'd also like to find out when pg was discarded and if it ever made it >> into POSIX before that. Linux still has pg to the very day, but none of >> the current major BSDs (Free/Net/Open) offer it. POSIX 2001, 2004 >> Edition lists it as an excluded utility.[3] I've not been able to get >> the text of any prior POSIX documents. It seems they aren't freely >> available. >> >> Any ideas on how to proceed? >> >> >> Best >> Michael >> >> >> [1] This one's from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pg_(Unix)), >> but I've also found other sites stating the same. >> >> [2] >> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git/tree/text-utils/pg.c >> >> >> [3] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009696899/xrat/xcu_chap04.html >> >> ----- End forwarded message ----- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton 2020-06-15 0:32 ` Nemo Nusquam @ 2020-06-15 5:41 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2020-06-15 13:56 ` Clem Cole 1 sibling, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Lars Brinkhoff @ 2020-06-15 5:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Mary Ann Horton; +Cc: tuhs, Michael Siegel Mary Ann Horton wrote: > Eric Shienbrood at Berkeley wrote "more" around 1979, and it was the > standard BSD pager. It was inspired by the --More-- option in the ITS > terminal driver at MIT. Daniel Halbert wrote to comp.society.folklore in 1994: "I was a first-year graduate student at UC Berkeley in 1978. I had been an undergraduate at MIT, and had used the ITS timesharing systems there, which ran on PDP-10's. ITS put a "--MORE--" at the bottom of the screen when one typed out files [..] So I wrote a simple "cr3"-like program, but had it print "--More--" instead of ringing the bell. I had it accept space instead of carriage return to continue, because that was what I was used to from ITS." Wikipedia says "more" was written by Daniel Halbert and expanded by Eric Shienbrood and Geoff Peck. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-15 5:41 ` Lars Brinkhoff @ 2020-06-15 13:56 ` Clem Cole 2020-06-15 14:15 ` Mary Ann Horton 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Clem Cole @ 2020-06-15 13:56 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Lars Brinkhoff; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4501 bytes --] First, as for pg(1) itself, I thought it came from one of the non-Research labs, like Holmdel or Indian Hill. I certainly remember using it on AT&T based system before System V arrived on the scene. It's possible, tjk had it from USG, but I think it's more likely I saw it from someone like Phil Karn. We also had pg(1) at Tek until I was introduced to more(1) probably originally from Jim Kleckner and the CAD folks [which worked better and pg(1) -- which means I probably brought pg(1) to Tek, unless it came from one the Purdue folks like Ward, I don't remember]. I also know pg(1) was available for PWB 3.0 at some point, as we had it at Masscomp before we got System V and we had it the AT&T 'universe' but I don't remember the provenance of that code (again I could have brought it with me, but I think it came to Masscomp via MIT). That said, Warren's PWB 3.0/SYS III source tree does not show binary or source, which makes the thought that it was AT&T based, but originated at a lab other than Summit or MH. On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 1:41 AM Lars Brinkhoff <lars@nocrew.org> wrote: > Daniel Halbert wrote to comp.society.folklore in 1994: > "I was a first-year graduate student at UC Berkeley in 1978. I had > been an undergraduate at MIT, and had used the ITS timesharing systems > there, which ran on PDP-10's. ITS put a "--MORE--" at the bottom of > the screen when one typed out files [..] > I believe that to be true. Wikipedia says "more" was written by Daniel Halbert and expanded by Eric Shienbrood > and Geoff Peck. > I also believe that is partially true and Mary Ann is actually correct in the provenance. I think Eric arrived later than Dan (maybe a year later), but was also ex-MIT, and he too had used/seen --MORE-- on ITS as Dan had. But I was under the impression Eric started over. Then a few years after Eric, Geoff worked with Eric's sources to add a few features. As for starting over/hacking on the program from Dan's original code base, it's hard to call that one, as I recall that Dan's version was not much more than a hack on to cat(1). i.e. the original version was pretty simple, and I don't remember that it 'knew' about the type of terminal being used, get info from TERMCAP *et al*. [My intro to Dan's version was at Tek, BTW but was quickly replaced with Eric's TERMCAP version which I think I got from Mary Ann, but might have also been via the CAD connection - we in TekLabs had written all of the TERMCAP support for the Tek 4025 and family and I was working to get it all back into the UCB database, so we got a bunch of early PDP-11 based TERMCAP/curses code to help debug things since the 4025 supported some interesting modes]. To be fair, ITS and Dan certainly should get credit for introducing the idea of the terminal pager to UCB, but it really was Eric that created the more(1) program framework that took off and eventually did begat less(1), pg(1), p(1) and others. As for less(1) itself, the Gnu folks seem to have started with Geoff's version (which I think is the version in 4.2 BSD if you look at SCCS delta in Kurt's disks), with the biggest addition was for the user to be able to go backward and look at some of the text that had already scrolled off the page. But as pointed out elsewhere, after the Gnu folks had peed all over it; as Doug says, (and I suspect most of us agree) it really became a sort of lesson in featuritis. But as discussed on many things in the historical computer world, more/less/pg/p often comes back to taste -> more(1) and p(1) were much more directed a doing one job well. As Larry says, there are features of less(1) which can be handy depending on your environment -- if you don't have a window manager/BLIT or today's user interfaces with unlimited scrolling (*i.e. *still on an ADM3A or VT-100), then many of the features of less(1) probably are considered a nice to have, you got used to them and it became your standard [burned in the ROMs in your fingers like csh(1) and vi(1) into my own]. But as Rob and Doug have pointed out, p(1) is more than sufficient and the 'extras' that programs like less(1) in a modern and clean environment start having doubtful long term value. Certainly, the 'cost' in complexity and 'code bloat' seems like a poor trade-off. But the assumption to me is that the desire for those type of features are fulfilled with different tools in the current world, but if you grew up with using them (say like Larry) I can see the value. Clem [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6965 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-15 13:56 ` Clem Cole @ 2020-06-15 14:15 ` Mary Ann Horton 2020-06-15 14:56 ` Clem Cole 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Mary Ann Horton @ 2020-06-15 14:15 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Clem Cole, Lars Brinkhoff; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1238 bytes --] Hmm. Clem has a far richer recollection than I do. I don't recall Dan's version, but I defer to Clem. I do have a vague recollection of a program called cr3 intended to mimic the tty driver thing. Perhaps that was Dan's version. I note that my 4.1BSD manual more(1) says the author is "Eric Shienbrood, minor revisions by John Foderaro and Geoffrey Peck." On 6/15/20 6:56 AM, Clem Cole wrote: > > Wikipedia says "more" was written by Daniel Halbert and expanded > by EricShienbrood and Geoff Peck. > > I also believe that is partially true and Mary Ann is actually correct > in the provenance. > > I think Eric arrived later than Dan (maybe a year later), but was also > ex-MIT, and he too had used/seen --MORE-- on ITS as Dan had. But I > was under the impression Eric started over. Then a few years after > Eric, Geoff worked with Eric's sources to add a few features. As for > starting over/hacking on the program from Dan's original code base, > it's hard to call that one, as I recall that Dan's version was not > much more than a hack on to cat(1). i.e. the original version was > pretty simple, and I don't remember that it 'knew' about the type of > terminal being used, get info from TERMCAP /et al/. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2650 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-15 14:15 ` Mary Ann Horton @ 2020-06-15 14:56 ` Clem Cole 2020-06-15 15:04 ` Richard Salz ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Clem Cole @ 2020-06-15 14:56 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Mary Ann Horton; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1696 bytes --] On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 10:15 AM Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net> wrote: > Hmm. Clem has a far richer recollection than I do. I don't recall Dan's > version, but I defer to Clem. > > I do have a vague recollection of a program called cr3 intended to mimic > the tty driver thing. Perhaps that was Dan's version. > You know, indeed it might have been called cr3 originally. We used it for such a short time. I just remember we had something that was an alternative to pg(1), there was something different about it, maybe it better used the try driver's canonical modes, I really don't remember. I do remember when the TERMCAP based more(1) showed up, we all switched to it overnight. Funny, when Steve Zimmerman was at Masscomp, one of the things he did was put the ITS style 'more' into the TTY driver (along with Tenex style ^T), both of which I loved having until I went to Stellar -- it was always on my list of things that would be cool. But we had window managers by then, and we never thought adding more into the TTY driver it was worth it. The truth is, either put it in the driver as a base feature so everything that runs gets support for it without having to remember to add it to the pipeline, or solves the problem more globally like a window manager does. I can see good arguments to both schemes -- that later is a tad more elegant and see seems simpler / less complex (Doug's rules). In fact, we have lived with that style of solution for years, but ... I still need to use more(1) even with a window manager/terminal emulator that allows me to scroll 'forever' [I don't need many of the features of less(1)], but something like p/pg/more does seem to be desirable. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3116 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-15 14:56 ` Clem Cole @ 2020-06-15 15:04 ` Richard Salz 2020-06-15 16:14 ` Clem Cole 2020-06-15 15:45 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2020-06-21 18:49 ` Michael Siegel 2 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Richard Salz @ 2020-06-15 15:04 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Clem Cole; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 260 bytes --] > > Funny, when Steve Zimmerman was at Masscomp, one of the things he did was > put the ITS style 'more' into the TTY driver (along with Tenex style ^T) > Did Steve go to UofMD? They were big on those things. (I seem to recall a patch adding it to Pyramid) [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 669 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-15 15:04 ` Richard Salz @ 2020-06-15 16:14 ` Clem Cole 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Clem Cole @ 2020-06-15 16:14 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Richard Salz; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 443 bytes --] No, that the same Steve Zimmerman was (is) and MIT type (he is also the 'Zimmerman' of EMACS fame. On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 11:04 AM Richard Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote: > Funny, when Steve Zimmerman was at Masscomp, one of the things he did was >> put the ITS style 'more' into the TTY driver (along with Tenex style ^T) >> > > Did Steve go to UofMD? They were big on those things. (I seem to recall > a patch adding it to Pyramid) > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1213 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-15 14:56 ` Clem Cole 2020-06-15 15:04 ` Richard Salz @ 2020-06-15 15:45 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2020-06-15 19:08 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2020-06-21 18:49 ` Michael Siegel 2 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Lars Brinkhoff @ 2020-06-15 15:45 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Clem Cole; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel Clem Cole wrote: > I think Eric arrived later than Dan (maybe a year later), but was also > ex-MIT, and he too had used/seen --MORE-- on ITS as Dan had. But I was > under the impression Eric started over. That's not what Dan writes (see below), but I'll ask him to confirm his version. Clem Cole wrote: > Mary Ann Horton wrote: >> I do have a vague recollection of a program called cr3 intended to >> mimic the tty driver thing. Perhaps that was Dan's version. > > You know, indeed it might have been called cr3 originally. Dan's full account is on his web site here: https://danhalbert.org/more.html He writes he was not happy with cr3 and wrote more to replace it. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-15 15:45 ` Lars Brinkhoff @ 2020-06-15 19:08 ` Lars Brinkhoff 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Lars Brinkhoff @ 2020-06-15 19:08 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Clem Cole; +Cc: TUHS main list, Michael Siegel > Clem Cole wrote: >> I think Eric arrived later than Dan (maybe a year later), but was also >> ex-MIT, and he too had used/seen --MORE-- on ITS as Dan had. But I was >> under the impression Eric started over. > That's not what Dan writes (see below), but I'll ask him to confirm his > version. He responded and asked me to post his reply to the mailing list: As described in https://danhalbert.org/more.html, I wrote the original version of more. It was only a page or two or code, and was meant to replace the dysfunctional cr3. It went into raw mode so it could read a space as a "next page" character, but otherwise didn't care about what kind of terminal it was on. (The ADM-3's (not 3A's) were barely a terminal.) Clem Cole's timeline is a bit off. Eric Shienbrood, Geoff Peck, and I all arrived at Berkeley at the same time in fall 1978 as CS grad students, and became friends (along with some other folks). After I wrote the first version, I did not have time to continue to working on it, so Eric picked it up and added many more features. My contribution is that I had the original idea (to replace cr3) and coined the name, and made the very first version. I am grateful to Eric, Geoff, and others taking it much further with many more features. I am still in touch with Eric, and will ask him to see what he has to say. We are both still alive so I appreciate Lars getting in touch with me to verify. I also wrote a hack less as a joke, which was more except that it scrolled up the screen rather than down . I think it was Bill Joy who then wrote another less that paged from the end of the file (and also scrolled up the screen). ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-15 14:56 ` Clem Cole 2020-06-15 15:04 ` Richard Salz 2020-06-15 15:45 ` Lars Brinkhoff @ 2020-06-21 18:49 ` Michael Siegel 2020-06-22 0:35 ` Greg A. Woods 2 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Michael Siegel @ 2020-06-21 18:49 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs Am 15.06.20 um 16:56 schrieb Clem Cole: > Funny, when Steve Zimmerman was at Masscomp, one of the things he did > was put the ITS style 'more' into the TTY driver (along with Tenex > style ^T), both of which I loved having until I went to Stellar -- > it was always on my list of things that would be cool. But we had > window managers by then, and we never thought adding more into the > TTY driver it was worth it. The truth is, either put it in the > driver as a base feature so everything that runs gets support for it > without having to remember to add it to the pipeline, or solves the > problem more globally like a window manager does. I can see good > arguments to both schemes -- that later is a tad more elegant and see > seems simpler / less complex (Doug's rules). In fact, we have lived > with that style of solution for years, but ... I still need to use > more(1) even with a window manager/terminal emulator that allows me > to scroll 'forever' [I don't need many of the features of less(1)], > but something like p/pg/more does seem to be desirable. From my perspective as a user, I would love to see paging built in. Having to use pagers to view terminal output conveniently is, in my opinion, a major nuisance. In fact, my question about the origin and life of pg(1) arose while writing a yet unfinished addendum to a blog article that details my failed attempt to hack together a solution for auto-paged ls(1).[1] The conclusion there was: Those attempts (you can find them in quite a few places throughout the Web) are futile, just pipe to a pager when you need it. However, there's no need to write out "less" every time. You can just alias that to "pg" without causing any harm and save two letters, which is an improvement for a task that is performed manually rather often. Michael [1] https://www.msiism.org/blog/2019/07/17/no_fun_with_auto-paged_ls.html PS: I hope it's okay that I chose to reply just to the list address and take all the other addresses out. If not, please let me know. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-21 18:49 ` Michael Siegel @ 2020-06-22 0:35 ` Greg A. Woods 2020-06-22 16:24 ` Derek Fawcus 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Greg A. Woods @ 2020-06-22 0:35 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2516 bytes --] At Sun, 21 Jun 2020 20:49:31 +0200, Michael Siegel <msi@malbolge.net> wrote: Subject: Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager > > In fact, my question about the origin and life of pg(1) arose while > writing a yet unfinished addendum to a blog article that details my > failed attempt to hack together a solution for auto-paged ls(1).[1] > > The conclusion there was: Those attempts (you can find them in quite a > few places throughout the Web) are futile, just pipe to a pager when you > need it. Indeed! Just pipe to a pager when you need to! There's also the benefit use of a modern "terminal" gives, e.g. Xterm: (a) on a modern screen it can display a whole lot more than an old-fashioned 24x80 terminal; (b) it offers a scroll-back buffer so if you get somewhat more output than expected you can just scroll back a bit to scan through it all. Such features further reduce the need for any pager. In a related vein what annoys me are so-called modern programs like "git", "hg", and others which default to always piping their output through $PAGER, along with such things as colour decorations enabled, but when you tack on "|$PAGER" to their command-line then they turn off the decorations! They cause me to have to undo decades of finger memory. > However, there's no need to write out "less" every time. You can just > alias that to "pg" without causing any harm and save two letters, which > is an improvement for a task that is performed manually rather often. I've used an alias and/or shell function called "ds" (for display) since approximately forever, typically to invoke whatever I've set $PAGER to, at least in more recent times. Others I've know have called it just "p", and indeed there's been a pager called just "p" in Research Unix since the Eighth Edition (and in 8th Edition the manual page suggests is also known as "more" and by 10th Edition the manual adds "pg" too, though it's not installed directly with those aliases by the makefile). I've stuck with "ds", partly for finger memory, and also partly because it is for the most part unique (at least in all environments I've typically used). That gives me the option of using a pager called "pg" directly should I want to, while getting my "default" favourite pager (from those available on a given system) when I use "ds". -- Greg A. Woods <gwoods@acm.org> Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca> Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com> Avoncote Farms <woods@avoncote.ca> [-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP Digital Signature --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 195 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-22 0:35 ` Greg A. Woods @ 2020-06-22 16:24 ` Derek Fawcus 2020-06-22 21:33 ` Rob Pike 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Derek Fawcus @ 2020-06-22 16:24 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 05:35:28PM -0700, Greg A. Woods wrote: > > In a related vein what annoys me are so-called modern programs like > "git", "hg", and others which default to always piping their output > through $PAGER, along with such things as colour decorations enabled, > but when you tack on "|$PAGER" to their command-line then they turn off > the decorations! They cause me to have to undo decades of finger > memory. Well, for further fun, one could always export GIT_PAGER=cat, then git will not use a pager for those commands, recognising that 'cat' is a no-op in such cases. :-) DF ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-22 16:24 ` Derek Fawcus @ 2020-06-22 21:33 ` Rob Pike 2020-06-22 21:58 ` Kurt H Maier 0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread From: Rob Pike @ 2020-06-22 21:33 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Derek Fawcus; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 807 bytes --] There is only one correct way. % grep PAGER .bashrc export PAGER='col -b' % -rob On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 2:26 AM Derek Fawcus < dfawcus+lists-tuhs@employees.org> wrote: > On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 05:35:28PM -0700, Greg A. Woods wrote: > > > > In a related vein what annoys me are so-called modern programs like > > "git", "hg", and others which default to always piping their output > > through $PAGER, along with such things as colour decorations enabled, > > but when you tack on "|$PAGER" to their command-line then they turn off > > the decorations! They cause me to have to undo decades of finger > > memory. > > Well, for further fun, one could always export GIT_PAGER=cat, > then git will not use a pager for those commands, recognising that > 'cat' is a no-op in such cases. :-) > > DF > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3834 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-22 21:33 ` Rob Pike @ 2020-06-22 21:58 ` Kurt H Maier 0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Kurt H Maier @ 2020-06-22 21:58 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 07:33:31AM +1000, Rob Pike wrote: > There is only one correct way. > > > ... .bashrc > I have a doubt. khm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager 2020-06-14 22:52 Warren Toomey 2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton @ 2020-06-18 12:49 ` Michael Siegel 1 sibling, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread From: Michael Siegel @ 2020-06-18 12:49 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs Hello everyone, now that I'm subscribed to this list as well, first let me say thank you for all the info on pg(1) you've provided. I really wasn't expecting that much. The only thing I'm able to add here is that, shortly after I had sent my question to Warren, I discovered that the Rationale section in the POSIX description of more(1) explicitly says: The more utility, available in BSD and BSD-derived systems, was chosen as the prototype for the POSIX file display program since it is more widely available than either the public-domain program less or than pg, a pager provided in System V.[1] This also strongly suggests that pg(1) never made it into POSIX. Well, if I'm not mistaken, that quote actually says that pg(1) didn't make it into POSIX. Michael [1] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/more.html#tag_20_81_18 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2020-06-22 22:05 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 18+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2020-06-21 22:40 [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager Noel Chiappa -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below -- 2020-06-14 22:52 Warren Toomey 2020-06-14 23:37 ` Mary Ann Horton 2020-06-15 0:32 ` Nemo Nusquam 2020-06-15 5:41 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2020-06-15 13:56 ` Clem Cole 2020-06-15 14:15 ` Mary Ann Horton 2020-06-15 14:56 ` Clem Cole 2020-06-15 15:04 ` Richard Salz 2020-06-15 16:14 ` Clem Cole 2020-06-15 15:45 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2020-06-15 19:08 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2020-06-21 18:49 ` Michael Siegel 2020-06-22 0:35 ` Greg A. Woods 2020-06-22 16:24 ` Derek Fawcus 2020-06-22 21:33 ` Rob Pike 2020-06-22 21:58 ` Kurt H Maier 2020-06-18 12:49 ` Michael Siegel
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