Automatic Paging/"More"ing

[Clay Phipps]

I must disagree with Chuqui on the automatic paging issue.

I upload and download files by doing a "cat" on the UNIX side
to create a stream a data that the communication software on my PC
reads or writes.

Nonetheless, this file transfer via "cat" is much less frequent
than the occasions when I curse UNIX for requiring me to guess in advance
whether or not a file contains or a command will produce
more than a screenful of data.  Having to watch the screen so I will be ready 
to leap for the CTRL-S key combination to suspend output is not acceptable
(I usually have other productive things to do while I wait for output
such as from Rob's time-consuming "find").  As Laura has already pointed out,
computers are much better at detecting a filled screen than people are.
I don't want to have to type commands twice just to be able to keep
the line of interest on the screen, but it happens continually.  
The computer should exist to serve the human, not the reverse.  

I am convinced that proper presentation of data on a terminal screen, 
including automatic paging, is a wholly reasonable task
for the terminal driver.  This is to compensate for the transient nature
of output to CRTs, which is one of their fundamental characteristics.

I would be quite happy to type commands before and after my "cat"
to disable then enable automatic paging (obviously, I could put
the command sequence into a shell script) if I got automatic paging
in return.  I think that it would be a great trade.
This follows the general principle that the exceptional case,
rather than the common case, requires the extra effort from a user.

-- Clay Phipps

-- 
   {allegra,amd70,cbosgd,dsd,floyd,harpo,hpda,ihnp4,
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   !fortune!phipps