Subject: Promote Screen? Include .screenrc!

From: David Marsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 07:12:11 +1000

> Yeah, I don't quite see how a screenrc would help either;

I had the same problem. When I first tried it I couldn't see the point.

Then I had problems with a machine constantly disconnecting me due to  
network problems, and out of frustration I tried screen to keep my  
session. I worked great.

I started signing it's praises to my colleagues once I learned that I  
could have multiple connections to other  machines in their own  
windown on startup (with the help of ssh).

_______________________________________________
screen-users mailing list
[email-masked]
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/screen-users

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From: Micah Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:55:40 -0700

David Marsh wrote:
> could have multiple connections to other  machines in their own windown
> on startup (with the help of ssh).

Sounds more like praise of screen, rather than an argument for a large
sample screenrc file.

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer.
GNU Maintainer: wget, screen, teseq
http://micah.cowan.name/

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From: David Marsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 18:59:50 +1000

> Sounds more like praise of screen, rather than an argument for a large

Oh, indeed it is certainly praise for screen.

Maybe I didn't explain what I meant very well; When I tried screen for  
the very first time I really didn't understand how it worked or even  
what it did that I couldn't do with a tabbed terminal manager.

A simple .screenrc file that opened two windows with shell in each,  
plus a nice simple hardstatus line might have help me to understand  
how screen was useful sooner.

Maybe put a very simple example on http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/

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From: "Aaron Davies" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 18:15:58 +0800

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 4:59 PM, David Marsh <[email-masked]> wrote:
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>
> Maybe I didn't explain what I meant very well; When I tried screen for the
> very first time I really didn't understand how it worked or even what it did
> that I couldn't do with a tabbed terminal manager.
>
> A simple .screenrc file that opened two windows with shell in each, plus a
> nice simple hardstatus line might have help me to understand how screen was
> useful sooner.

i don't remember off the top of my head what the /etc/screenrc and/or
default settings are in the source distro of screen, but i've seen
plenty of installations where not having a ~/.screenrc leads to screen
starting with no status line at all--you can't tell anything's
happened, even once you start creating new windows. the only way to
know you're inside screen would be by the odd things that happen once
you hit ctrl-A.

a default hardstatus/caption showing, at minimum, the list of screens
with the current one highlighted would be a huge help.
-- 
Aaron Davies
[email-masked]

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From: Mark Eichin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:22:47 -0400

> windown on startup (with the help of ssh).

My take on that is that it's still not a screenrc that's important,
but getting the user to understand screen-management in the first
place - those features don't make sense until you "get" screen
selection (I have some colleagues who still don't, but are quite happy
to use screen for single-session preservation.)  Once you get that,
"oh yeah, you can stuff things you like in .screenrc, just like you do
with your .bashrc or .login" is a *very* small step; it's the features
themselves that need promotion.  (Thus my suggestion of screencasts,
as a substitute for the look-over-my-shoulder approach.)

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From: Micah Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:12:45 -0700

David Marsh wrote:
> A simple .screenrc file that opened two windows with shell in each, plus
> a nice simple hardstatus line might have help me to understand how
> screen was useful sooner.

Yes, but then it's not a useful default .screenrc, more of a sample of
what you might do. IMO, that makes it a better candidate for the Wiki
than inclusion in the source package.

Really, screen could do with a nice tutorial, in addition to its current
reference-manual documentation.

- --
Micah J. Cowan

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From: Chris Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:56:30 -0400

> reference-manual documentation.

Has anyone here taken a peek at David Douthitt's

    "GNU Screen A Comprehensive Introduction"

???

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From: "Thomas Adam" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2008 21:37:56 +0100

>    "GNU Screen A Comprehensive Introduction"

Yes -- it's not that comprehensive, and reads like an annotated
version of the screen users' manual.

-- Thomas Adam

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From: Chris Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Oct 2008 22:52:00 -0400

> version of the screen users' manual.

I guess whether it's worth the money all depends on the quality of the
annotations, then.. :-)

As another poster stated, what's missing to jumpstart new users (in the
few hours/days before they give up) is a document that describes the
different things that you can do with screen and for each of them how
you set it up .. helping them build their .screenrc as they go along and
understanding what they're doing.

I was hoping the book above took this approach but from what you're
saying, this is not not the case.