From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: markwgreen@rogers.com (Mark Green) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2017 16:03:01 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] pre-more pager? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: If I recall correctly there was a program called p on v6 unix that served as a pager. I think it was part of the standard distribution and not a local Toronto mod. Sent from my iPhone > On Nov 8, 2017, at 2:29 PM, Forrest, Jon wrote: > > > >> On 11/8/2017 10:54 AM, Will Senn wrote: >> Hi, > >> In the meantime, how did folks page through text like man sh and such >> before more? I know how to view sections of text using sed and ed's ok for >> paging file text (painful, but workable). I just can't seem to locate the >> idiomatic way of keeping everything from constantly scrolling out of view! >> Obviously, this isn't a problem on my mac as terminal works fine, but I >> like to try to stay in character as a 1970 time traveling unix user :). > > In the early days of Unix I was told that it wasn't practical to write > a pager because such a thing would have to run in raw mode in order > to process single letter commands, such as the space character for > going on to the next page. Since raw mode introduced a significant amount > of overhead on already overtaxed machines, it was considered an anti-social > thing to do. > > In 1977 and 1978 I worked at Ford Aerospace in the group that produced > KSOS, which was a "secure" version of Unix (I didn't actually work on > KSOS myself since I didn't have, nor want, a security clearance). Anyway, > that group used some incredibly expensive HP terminals that contained > enough local memory to contain most text files, the way we overcame the > lack of a pager was to cat the file, and then page around in the local > memory. > > IIRC later versions of Unix added the ability to respond to a specific > list of single characters without going into raw mode. Of course, that > didn't help when full-screen editors like vi and the Rand editor came out. > > Cordially, > Jon Forrest > > >