From: CRDGW2::CRDGW2::MRGATE::"SMTP::CRVAX.SRI.COM::RELAY-INFO-VAX" 17-APR-1991 08:32:49.65 To: ARISIA::EVERHART CC: Subj: New Improved MOST available From: RELAY-INFO-VAX@CRVAX.SRI.COM@SMTP@CRDGW2 To: Everhart@Arisia@MRGATE Received: by crdgw1.ge.com (5.57/GE 1.97) id AA17648; Wed, 17 Apr 91 08:16:29 EDT Received: From UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU by CRVAX.SRI.COM with TCP; Wed, 17 APR 91 00:34:24 PST Received: by ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (5.63/1.42) id AA11981; Wed, 17 Apr 91 00:17:32 -0700 Received: from USENET by ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU with netnews for info-vax@kl.sri.com (info-vax@kl.sri.com) (contact usenet@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU if you have questions) Date: 16 Apr 91 12:06:07 GMT From: mintaka!olivea!samsung!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!davis@bloom-beacon.mit.edu ("John E. Davis") Organization: "Dept. of Physics, The Ohio State University" Subject: New Improved MOST available Message-Id: Sender: info-vax-request@kl.sri.com To: info-vax@kl.sri.com Hi, Most 2.5 is ready via anonymous ftp here on pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu in the tmp directory. It is distributed in a 7 part vms share format. It should also appear on vmsnet.sources in a day or so. Some bugs in previous versions were corrected. The new version now supports the viewing of 8 bit binary files as well as ordinary ascii files. In addition, it now recognizes the presence of ^M's in files that are produced by, say RUNOFF, to overstrike characters simulationg bold text. This facilitates the reading of the Wollongong man pages etc... It is now possible to toggle on/off case sensitive searching. There is greater support for the keypad keys on vtxxx terminals. MOST now recognizes prev-scrn, next-scrn, find, etc... In addition, all of the keyio code has been cleaned up allowing one to easily add other keys. It is now possible to delete a file while viewing it. This makes it easy to clean up directories. There is also some support for `unknown' terminals. There are a few other things: set mark, better online help, etc... Here is the doc file: MOST 4/16/91 NAME most - browse or page through a text file SYNOPSIS most [ -bcstv ] [ +linenumber ] [+c][+d] [ +/string ] [ filename ... ] DESCRIPTION MOST is a paging program that displays, one screenful at a time, the contents of a text file on a vtxxx compatable terminal. It pauses after each screenful and prints at bottom of the screen the file name, current line number, and the percentage of lines so far displayed. If the terminal is not vtxxx compatable, MOST must be used with the dumb terminal option, -l. Much of the features of MOST, such as underlining, etc, are lost with this switch. In addition to displaying ordinary text files, MOST can also display binary files. See the description of the -b option for further details. Text files may contain combinations of underscore and backspace characters causing a printer to underline or overstrike. When MOST recognizes this, it inserts the appropriate escape sequences to achieve these the desired effect on vtxxx compatable terminals. In addition, some files cause the printer to overstrike some characters by embedding carriage return characters in the middle of a line. When this occurs, MOST displays the ovestruck character with a bold attribute. This feature facilitates the reading of unix man pages or a document produced by RUNOFF. In particular, viewing this document with MOST should illustrate this behavior provided that the underline characters have not been stripped. This may be turned off with the -v option. By default, lines with more characters than the terminal width are not wrapped but are instead truncated. When truncation occurs, this is indicated by a `$' in the far right column of the terminal screen. The RIGHT and LEFT arrow keys may be used to view lines which extend past the margins of the screen. Commands are listed below. OPTIONS -b binary mode. Use this switch when you want to view files containing 8 bit characters. MOST will display the file 16 bytes per line in hexidecimal notation. A typical line looks like: 01000000 40001575 9C23A020 4000168D ....@..u.#. @... When used with the -v option, the same line looks like: ^A^@^@^@ @^@^U u 9C #A0 @^@^V8D ....@..u.#. @... -c Clear before displaying. Redrawing the screen instead of scrolling for faster displays. -l Dumb terminal option. Use this when the terminal is not vt100 compatable. -s Squeeze. Replace multiple blank lines with a single blank line. -v Display control characters as in `^A' for control A. Normally MOST does not interpret control characters. -t Display tabs as `^I'. This option is meaningful only when used with the -v option. +linenumber Start up at linenumber. +c Make search case sensitive. By default, they are not. +d This switch should only be used if you want the option to delete a file while viewing it. This makes it easier to clean unwanted files out of a directory. The file is deleted with the interactive key sequence `:D' and then confirming with `y'. +/string Start up at the line containing the first occurence of string. USAGE Environment There are currently two environment variables that MOST looks for: MOST_SWITCHES This variable sets commonly used switches. For example, many people prefer to use MOST with the -c option. On VMS this is normally done done in the login.com through the line: $ define MOST_SWITCHES "-c" MOST_HELP This variable must be setup to point to the MOST helpfile. Without this MOST will not be able to provide online help. Command Usage The commands take effect immediately; it is not necessary to type a carriage return. In the following commands, i is a numerical argument (1 by default). iSPACE, iCONTROL-D, iNEXT_SCREEN Display another screenful, or jump i screenfuls if i is specified. iRETURN, iDOWN_ARROW, iV, iCONTROL-N Display another line, or i more lines, if specified. iUP_ARROW, i^, iCONTROL-P Display previous line, or i previous lines, if specified. RIGHT_ARROW, TAB, >, CONTROL-F Scroll screen left to view columns that are beyond the right margin of the screen. LEFT_ARROW, CONTROL-B, < Scroll screen right to view columns that are beyond the left margin of the screen. iU, iCONTROL-U, iDELETE, PREV_SCREEN Skip back i screenfuls and then print a screenful. R, CONTROL-R Redraw the screen. iJ, iG If i is not specified, then prompt for a line number then jump to that line otherwise just jump to line i. i% If i is not specified, then prompt for a percent number then jump to that percent of the file otherwise just jump to i percent of the file. Q, CONTROL-X CONTROL-C, CONTROL-K E Exit from MOST. h, CONTROL-H, HELP Help. Give a description of all the MOST commands. The MOST environment variable MOST_SWITCHES must be set for this to be meaningful. if,i/, FIND Prompt for a string and search forward from the current line for ith distinct line containing the string. CONTROL-G aborts. i? Prompt for a string and search backward for the ith distinct line containing the string. CONTROL-G aborts. in Search for the next i lines containing an occurrence of the last search string in the direction of the previous search. :n Skip to the next filename given in the command line. :c Toggle case sensitive search. :D Delete current file. This command is only meaningful with the +d switch. m, SELECT, CONTROL-@, CONTROL-K M Set a mark on the current line fo later reference. INSERT_HERE, CONTROL-X CONTROL-X, COMMA, CONTROL-K RETURN Set a mark on the current line but return to previous mark. This allows the user to toggle back and forth between two positions in the file. BUGS Almost all of the known bugs or limitations of MOST are due to a desire to read and interpret control characters in files. One problem concerns the use of backspace characters to underscore or overstrike other characters. MOST makes an attempt to use terminal escape sequences to simulate this behavior. One side effect is the one does not always get what one expects when scrolling right and left through a file. When in doubt, use the -v and -b options of MOST. Normally MOST scrolls the line containing the match of a string search to the top of the screen. However, if the match occurs in the middle of the last screenful, MOST will not do this. String searches may fail when viewing binary files with the -b option. This is due to the possible occurrence of NULL characters (ascii 0) which are used as string delimeters in the search routines. MOST is capable of reading binary files using only the -v option. Eight bit characters are represented as their octal values in a slashified format. However, the presence of NULL characters will cause some of the data to be lost. Hence binary files should only be viewed with the -b option. The largest file MOST is capabable of reading is 20000 lines. Even this figure is misleading, since lines which consist of more than 180 characters are broken into more than one line. The largest binary file MOST can handle is limited to 320 Kilobytes. At this time, MOST only works well with terminals understanding vt100 escape sequences. The -l option for unknown terminal types is a joke. One problem with it is that the screen is cleard by using a form feed character. Many terminals seem to use this method. This lack of terminal support should be corrected in the future. AUTHOR John E. Davis The Ohio State University Department of Physics davis@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank the users of MOST for valuable comments and criticisms. I would especially like to thank those individuals who have contributed code to MOST: Mats Akerberg, Henk D. Davids, and Rex O. Livingston I would also like to thank Shinichi Hama for his valuable criticisms of MOST. -- John bitnet: davis@ohstpy internet: davis@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu