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- Date: Thu, 4 Aug 1994 08:58:10 +0200
- From: Richard Huveneers <huveneer@math.ruu.nl>
- Message-Id: <199408040658.AA10468@hieper.math.ruu.nl>
- To: mint@atari.archive.umich.edu, evanlang@uss.lonestar.org
-
- >
- > What are the advantages of screen? Why should I use it? I know its
- > a matter of personal preference, but so far I've found myself using most
- > of Unix stuff that the list has found useful. Never thought I'd
- > admit it, but Unix utils are useful :-)
- >
-
- I think the manual of screen will answer this question quite satisfactorily,
-
- Richard.
-
- Screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a
- physical terminal between several processes (typically
- interactive shells). Each virtual terminal provides the
- functions of a DEC VT100 terminal and, in addition, several
- control functions from the ANSI X3.64 (ISO 6429) and ISO
- 2022 standards (e.g. insert/delete line and support for mul-
- tiple character sets). There is a scrollback history buffer
- for each virtual terminal and a copy-and-paste mechanism
- that allows moving text regions between windows.
-
- When screen is called, it creates a single window with a
- shell in it (or the specified command) and then gets out of
- your way so that you can use the program as you normally
- would. Then, at any time, you can create new (full-screen)
- windows with other programs in them (including more shells),
- kill existing windows, view a list of windows, turn output
- logging on and off, copy-and-paste text between windows,
- view the scrollback history, switch between windows in what-
- ever manner you wish, etc. When a program terminates,
- screen (per default) kills the window that contained it. If
- this window was in the foreground, the display switches to
- the previous window; if none are left, screen exits.
-
- Everything you type is sent to the program running in the
- current window. The only exception to this is the one keys-
- troke that is used to initiate a command to the window
- manager. By default, each command begins with a control-a
- (abbreviated C-a from now on), and is followed by one other
- keystroke. The command character and all the key bindings
- can be fully customized to be anything you like, though they
- are always two characters in length.
-