[Tutor] Text Editors and Linux (was Re: exit message)

[David Rock]

* Prasad, Ramit <ramit.prasad at jpmorgan.com> [2013-05-09 04:01]:
> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> > On the other hand, I work with, and watch, a lot of techies who live
> > in screen. They swear that they're more efficient, but watching them
> > hunt for the right virtual terminal doesn't look very efficient to
> > me. I often see them flip through three or four different VTs until
> > they reach the one they were looking for. It is especially amusing
> > when they end up shutting down the wrong server because they've gone
> > to the wrong vt and haven't realised it.
> > 
> 
> ctrl+a, <double quote>
> 
> will list all screen titles and let you navigate using arrow keys or
> typing in the number.  Of course, that assumes you correctly title
> your virtual terminal sessions. 
> 
> I was mostly curious because they seem roughly equivalent and mostly
> dependant on the terminal I am using. I was wondering if maybe there
> was a trick or two that I was missing.

I'll defend Steven on this one.  Yes, that works, but it's far from
efficient.  What I use in my .screenrc is:
hardstatus alwayslastline "%w"

Which effectively puts titled tabs on the last row of the screen.
Admittedly, if you have a lot of sessions open, you are limited by space
a bit doing this, in which case the ctrl+a " may be necessary, but you
have bigger issues if you have that many open at one time. :-)

> What I like about screen is the way sessions stay open when
> disconnected, but I find tabbed terminals easier to scroll for
> history. If there is a tabbed terminal that will allow split screens
> then all the neat features I know about in screen would
> exist...although I rarely use that feature at the moment.

Yes, the disconnect/reconnect is nice (I use it a lot). It's not exactly
relevant to merits of console interfaces vs GUI, though.  That's more of
a "this is a cool baked-in capability for working with lousy network
connections", which you can also do with things like VNC for a remote
GUI.

-- 
David Rock
david at graniteweb.com