Re: lynx-dev Shell Accounts [was: pre8 open documentation issues]

[pAb-032871]

HAH! YEAH!  Damn that thing's fast in a shell.

The server's running Lynx 2.8.1 pre 9 [not sure about the 9, but I think
that's it], so I had a few chances to see how it handles tables
differently.  Actually, I pointed it at some overcooked HTML I'd done
about a year ago, which looked good in Netscape, and I hadn't gotten
around to revising yet.

Nice how it recognizes that <CENTER> no longer applies inside a table.

I can see that's really how Lynx was meant to be used.  Shortcomings you
see when run as a local executable don't seem to make much difference over
a T1 [for example, when something like links-for-all-inlines is toggled,
it reloads the whole document instead of checking cached HTML.  Sometimes
quite a delay over a slow modem].

Things like d)ownloads get a little more complicated: saving to your login
dir on the server, then downloading *again* via FTP, but that's minor.


> Either island is clueless and is unaware of the security issues or they 
> absolutely know what they are I doing. Givnenthey are an ISP the odd are 
> hevaily in favor of the later.

Given what you said about that, I'm thinking of changing my password to
something longer and more bizarre.  Not sure what difference that would
make to a packet sniffer though.


> As far terminals go I found vt100 was rather too flakely for comfort and 
> vt102 
> in kermit worked much better, Some terminal emulators work a lot better if 
> you 
> sttu rows <n-1> where n is the number of rows on your display.

Many of the terminal emulators I tried couldn't connect on their own,
requiring a connection already set up by a telnet client.  For the Mac, I
have to recommend the free and open-sourced BetterTelnet [adapted and
enhanced from the NCSA telnet client], which handles terminal emulation on
its own.  You can choose from a couple terminals as well [vt220, default,
seemed to work].

http://www.cstone.net/~rbraun/mac/telnet/

[While that's not directly related to Lynx, I thought I should mention
it for anyone trying to use Lynx from a shell.]


There's some good, quick FAQs on using shell accounts here too:

http://www.savyon.com/ellen/faqs.htm


>>> Have you considered having a LinuxPPC and MacOS dual boot system?

After a closer look at the shell, I think I'll wait a bit, get a little
more used to how that OS behaves first.  Even pico [roughly translates to
SimpleText on Mac?] is quite foreign.  The commands are all pretty simple,
it just takes a little getting used to.  Remember that unlike Windows
users, I don't have any of DOS's command-line background.  Except in
MacLynx, of course.  :-)

With things like shell scripts, I'm not even sure if I have permission to
run them on that account or not.  From previous experience, I know I'm
good at picking apart existing structures for logical sense, so I might
just look around for existing scripts and learn more by tweaking them [of
course, I would NEVER try running something on the server without knowing
how it works/what it does first].


                    Patrick
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