Very Computer

by **andrij** » Thu, 25 Oct 2001 20:56:02

what's the difference between smit and smitty? I tought it's the same thing.

by **Thomas Seyra** » Thu, 25 Oct 2001 21:56:51

> what's the difference between smit and smitty? I tought it's the same thing.

'smit' is the "official" command, and uses a graphical user interface
("the running man ...") when your environment variable DISPLAY is set.
When DISPLAY is not set, the text-based version, also knows as
'smitty', is fired up. If you invoke 'smitty' on the command line, the
text-based version will be started, even DISPLAYU is set.

--
Thomas Seyrat.

by **Thomas Seyra** » Thu, 25 Oct 2001 21:58:12

> what's the difference between smit and smitty? I tought it's the same thing.

'smit' is the "official" command, and uses a graphical user interface
("the running man ...") when your environment variable DISPLAY is set.
When DISPLAY is not set, the text-based version, also knows as
'smitty', is fired up. If you invoke 'smitty' on the command line, the
text-based version will be started, even if DISPLAY is set.

--
Thomas Seyrat.

by **Andreas Schlag** » Thu, 25 Oct 2001 21:59:15

Quote:>what's the difference between smit and smitty? I tought it's the same
>thing.

If you run smit from a graphical workstation, smit is started as X-
Application. smitty instead always runs in character (tty) mode.

AFAIK the characterbased smit is more actual than the X smit.

hth.

Andreas.

by **Jochen Lübber** » Thu, 25 Oct 2001 22:06:16

As long as it can, "smit" comes with a Motif (or only motif-like?) GUI.
If no X-Servers is reachable smit behaves like smitty.
"smitty" is smit for tty and comes allways with a tty interface (e.g. in your aixterm or xterm).

J.Luebbers
--

----
"Wer die Freiheit aufgibt, um Sicherheit zu gewinnen,
der wird am Ende beides verlieren" (Benjamin Franklin)

by **Nick Maclar** » Thu, 25 Oct 2001 22:37:48

|> As long as it can, "smit" comes with a Motif (or only motif-like?) GUI.
|> If no X-Servers is reachable smit behaves like smitty.
|> "smitty" is smit for tty and comes allways with a tty interface (e.g. in your aixterm or xterm).

Yes and no. It wouldn't work at all on a genuine and original Teletype!

smit and smitty use a horrible curses interface, which is very sensitive
both to the type of terminal emulator you are using and the value of
the TERM variable. Note that it gets things even more wrong than the
average curses interface, because it attempts to use function keys,
which are not part of base curses. You can USUALLY use ESC+digit to
emulate them, but that doesn't always work.

Oh, for a REAL Teletype interface, which would at least allow me to
copy the screen output so that I could report bugs in this mess.
But I wouldn't need to if it had such an interface, because I
wouldn't HAVE to fight my way around those bugs ....

Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.

Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679

by **Timothy J. Boga** » Fri, 26 Oct 2001 00:20:39

>|> As long as it can, "smit" comes with a Motif (or only motif-like?) GUI.
>|> If no X-Servers is reachable smit behaves like smitty.
>|> "smitty" is smit for tty and comes allways with a tty interface (e.g. in your aixterm or xterm).

>Yes and no. It wouldn't work at all on a genuine and original Teletype!

Ah, but why not point out how difficult it would be to enter these commands via toggle switches?

Quote:
>smit and smitty use a horrible curses interface, which is very sensitive
>both to the type of terminal emulator you are using and the value of
>the TERM variable. Note that it gets things even more wrong than the
>average curses interface, because it attempts to use function keys,
>which are not part of base curses. You can USUALLY use ESC+digit to
>emulate them, but that doesn't always work.

>Oh, for a REAL Teletype interface, which would at least allow me to
>copy the screen output so that I could report bugs in this mess.
>But I wouldn't need to if it had such an interface, because I
>wouldn't HAVE to fight my way around those bugs ....

>Regards,
>Nick Maclaren,
>University of Cambridge Computing Service,
>New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.

Ah, I see now. 8-)

>Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679

Sheesh, and folks chide me for pulling SCSI-2 F/W hardware out of the trash....
--
"I'm a big fan of ignorance based techniques, because humans
have a lot of ignorance, and we want to play our strong suit."
Eric Lander New Scientist

by **Nick Maclar** » Fri, 26 Oct 2001 00:24:10

|> >

|> >|> As long as it can, "smit" comes with a Motif (or only motif-like?) GUI.
|> >|> If no X-Servers is reachable smit behaves like smitty.
|> >|> "smitty" is smit for tty and comes allways with a tty interface (e.g. in your aixterm or xterm).
|> >
|> >Yes and no. It wouldn't work at all on a genuine and original Teletype!
|>
|> Ah, but why not point out how difficult it would be to enter these commands via toggle switches?

Because tty is not an abbreviation of "toggle switches". It is an
abbreviation of Teletype!

|> >smit and smitty use a horrible curses interface, which is very sensitive
|> >both to the type of terminal emulator you are using and the value of
|> >the TERM variable. Note that it gets things even more wrong than the
|> >average curses interface, because it attempts to use function keys,
|> >which are not part of base curses. You can USUALLY use ESC+digit to
|> >emulate them, but that doesn't always work.
|> >
|> >Oh, for a REAL Teletype interface, which would at least allow me to
|> >copy the screen output so that I could report bugs in this mess.
|> >But I wouldn't need to if it had such an interface, because I
|> >wouldn't HAVE to fight my way around those bugs ....
|>
|> Ah, I see now. 8-)

Maybe you do; maybe you don't. If you have ever tried to report a
non-trivial bug in a curses interface, you will learn that the name
curses is entirely appropriate!

The great advantage of genuine line-mode is that you can use
scroll-back to see what you REALLY typed, and use either script
or cut-and-paste to provide evidence. script will occasionally
work with a curses interface, but in general it doesn't.

One of my PMRs is in this area, and is one where IBM took AGES
to repeat it, and it then partially disappeared due to some
unrelated software upgrade, so they had to ask me to run an
iptrace for them :-)

Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.

Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679

by **Christer Pal** » Fri, 26 Oct 2001 03:09:20

> |> >smit and smitty use a horrible curses interface, which is very sensitive
> |> >both to the type of terminal emulator you are using and the value of
> |> >the TERM variable.

Ha ha, since we seem to be in nitpicking mode we should maybe add that
smitty is _not_ based on curses.

--
Christer Palm

by **Nick Maclar** » Fri, 26 Oct 2001 01:24:34

|> >
|> > |> >smit and smitty use a horrible curses interface, which is very sensitive
|> > |> >both to the type of terminal emulator you are using and the value of
|> > |> >the TERM variable.
|>
|> Ha ha, since we seem to be in nitpicking mode we should maybe add that
|> smitty is _not_ based on curses.

That would explain why its problems are all different in detail.

However, it is STILL based on the original termcap/curses design,
for which there is no concise (or printable) description. And
the faults are almost all because of the design, and are not
simply bugs in the coding.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.

Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679

by **Christer Pal** » Fri, 26 Oct 2001 03:57:11

> |> >
> |> > |> >smit and smitty use a horrible curses interface, which is very sensitive
> |> > |> >both to the type of terminal emulator you are using and the value of
> |> > |> >the TERM variable.
> |>
> |> Ha ha, since we seem to be in nitpicking mode we should maybe add that
> |> smitty is _not_ based on curses.

> That would explain why its problems are all different in detail.

> However, it is STILL based on the original termcap/curses design,
> for which there is no concise (or printable) description.

Actually it's called ASL (AIX Screen Library), which is terminfo (not
termcap) based.

--
Christer Palm

by **Nick Maclar** » Fri, 26 Oct 2001 02:36:11

>> |> Ha ha, since we seem to be in nitpicking mode we should maybe add that
>> |> smitty is _not_ based on curses.

>> That would explain why its problems are all different in detail.

>> However, it is STILL based on the original termcap/curses design,
>> for which there is no concise (or printable) description.

>Actually it's called ASL (AIX Screen Library), which is terminfo (not
>termcap) based.

That is the same design. terminfo is termcap with brass knobs on,
and a different storage format. I am talking about the fundamentals,
not the details.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.

Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679

by **Christer Pal** » Fri, 26 Oct 2001 06:02:56

> That is the same design. terminfo is termcap with brass knobs on,
> and a different storage format. I am talking about the fundamentals,
> not the details.

So what's wrong with that design? Do you know of any better way of
figuring which control character you need to send to a certain terminal
do make it do something other than using TERM/terminfo?

--
Christer Palm

by **Dragan Cvetkovi** » Fri, 26 Oct 2001 04:33:49

> So what's wrong with that design? Do you know of any better way of
> figuring which control character you need to send to a certain terminal
> do make it do something other than using TERM/terminfo?

Of course this question open a new cans of worms.
Certain pages from "Unix haters book" come to mind.

Bye, Dragan

--
Dragan Cvetkovic,

To be or not to be is true. G. Boole

by **Nick Maclar** » Fri, 26 Oct 2001 05:18:35

>> So what's wrong with that design? Do you know of any better way of
>> figuring which control character you need to send to a certain terminal
>> do make it do something other than using TERM/terminfo?

> Of course this question open a new cans of worms.
> Certain pages from "Unix haters book" come to mind.

Quite. I haven't read that book, but I have heard that the author
and I share some background and perhaps the occasional viewpoint.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.

Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679