sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) (12/16/89)
Here's my experience with browse: Tried a make, which bombed because OFILES didn't get defined. Fixed OFILES. Tried again, no <whoami.h>. Commented out #include <whoami.h>. Successful make. Looked at the docs. Ok, picked a few things to try. Did "browse /tmp". Got an error message, and it put a line up for /tmp. Tried "?" for help. Got a bunch of nulls at the bottom of my screen. Did a ^Z to stop. Browse left my terminal in a strange mode. Kill -9 PID to kill browse. "tset" to reset terminal modes. Ran browse again. Messed with a bit. Commands not very intuitive. Tried to quit. Couldn't. ^Zd, looked in docs and found quit command. Tried again, it quit after several "q"s. "rm -rf browse" Sigh. I could *really* use something like browse, but it's just too damn painful to use. I wish people gave more thought to user interfaces. Sean -- *** Sean Casey sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitnet, ukma!sean *** Copyright 1989 by Sean Casey. Only non-profit redistribution permitted. *** "Gotta warn ya, if you're not a RUSH fan, well, what's *wrong* with you?" *** -DJ during WKQQs Four HOURS of Rush special.
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (12/19/89)
OK. Browse was written on a Version-7 UNIX system, ported to BSD, and ported to System III and then System V. The directory reading stuff is a set of minimal System III/System V/BSD compatibility routines. They were written some time around 1982, before I'd ever heard of Doug Gwyn's code. The BSD source startes at the second comment line. Everything before that is trying to figure out what system you're on. It can be trashed. I guess it's not quite as easy to figure that out as I thought... In article <13494@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: > Tried a make, which bombed because OFILES didn't get defined. Doesn't BSD make understand $(var:pat=replacement)? > Did "browse /tmp". Got an error message, and it put a line up for /tmp. What was the error message? > Tried "?" for help. Got a bunch of nulls at the bottom of my screen. There's no help. '?' displays text from the current file. > Did a ^Z to stop. Browse left my terminal in a strange mode. I'll bet. > Messed with a bit. Commands not very intuitive. Sorry. They're mostly a subset of 'vi'. > "rm -rf browse" Sigh. > I wish people gave more thought to user interfaces. Sounds like the big problem is getting it working on your system at all. What's it run? Sounds like a BSD derivitive. I've also heard it doesn't run on a Sun-4. If I had one to try it on maybe I could get it working. Send me mail... -- `-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.uu.net>. 'U` Also <peter@ficc.lonestar.org> or <peter@sugar.lonestar.org>. "It was just dumb luck that Unix managed to break through the Stupidity Barrier and become popular in spite of its inherent elegance." -- gavin@krypton.sgi.com
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (12/19/89)
The problem running Browse on BSD is in line 224: *db = *ptr; I guess the semantics of readdir have changed since 1982. Or I was lucky back then. The old variable-sized-structure problem lives again. Sigh. The solution is moderately complex. I'll post an update after I get around to fixing it. -- `-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.uu.net>. 'U` Also <peter@ficc.lonestar.org> or <peter@sugar.lonestar.org>. "It was just dumb luck that Unix managed to break through the Stupidity Barrier and become popular in spite of its inherent elegance." -- gavin@krypton.sgi.com
jba@harald.ruc.dk (Jan B. Andersen) (12/21/89)
sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >Here's my experience with browse: >[several lines deleted] >Messed with a bit. Commands not very intuitive. >Tried to quit. Couldn't. ^Zd, looked in docs and found quit command. >Tried again, it quit after several "q"s. >"rm -rf browse" I had no problems at all on a NCR TOWER 600. Looks very fine to me!
jrl@images.Waterloo.NCR.COM (john Latala) (12/21/89)
In article <196@harald.UUCP> jba@harald.ruc.dk (Jan B. Andersen) writes: > >I had no problems at all on a NCR TOWER 600. Looks very fine to me! I tried to get it running on a Tower and it worked like it was supposed to. The only problem that I've seen is that it doesn't scroll the screen if you walk all the way down a long directory listing. With that working reasonably I moved it to a different Tower and it wouldn't work properly. No matter what I did it always told me that the directory was empty! After a bit of poking around I found out that the first Tower DIDN'T have Doug Gwyn's direcvtory routines installed, whereas the second one DOES have them installed. I tried playing with it but didn't get anywhere because of time limitation (Hey! It's Christmas ... and I got shopping to do ... ) -- john.Latala@Waterloo.NCR.COM
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (12/23/89)
> I tried to get it running on a Tower and it worked like it was supposed > to. The only problem that I've seen is that it doesn't scroll the screen > if you walk all the way down a long directory listing. It expects the terminal to support either insert/delete line or set scrolling region. > After a bit of poking around I found out that the first Tower DIDN'T > have Doug Gwyn's direcvtory routines installed, whereas the second one > DOES have them installed. There was a bug in the directory routines, due to an apparent change in the way readdir worked. The new version posted to alt.sources should fix that. -- `-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.uu.net>. 'U` Also <peter@ficc.lonestar.org> or <peter@sugar.lonestar.org>. "It was just dumb luck that Unix managed to break through the Stupidity Barrier and become popular in spite of its inherent elegance." -- gavin@krypton.sgi.com