The "loop and a half"

[bartc]

On 06/10/2017 20:21, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 5:51 AM, bartc <bc at freeuk.com> wrote:

>> If you're stuck, whip out a tablet computer or smartphone (they should still
>> function without connectivity) and use a preloaded text editor. Or just
>> compose and then save an email. Even the simplest should be more
>> sophisticated than just blindly entering text on a Linux terminal screen.
> 
> Save an email and then what?

You will have been able to create and review the text using normal 
editing methods. It will then be saved as a draft somewhere. When the 
sort program is back up (if that's what you're planning), then retrieve 
the text with copy&paste. No need to actually send it anywhere.

My point is that everyone has the facility to create at least plain text 
documents off-line.

There is no need to start some ancient terminal utility, get no response 
from it, then blindly type in line after line with no idea if it's doing 
anything with it.

> You need to make a change to something on
> a remote server. Maybe your hosts file is borked. Maybe the mail
> server configuration is slightly off, resulting in delayed delivery.
> Maybe your bindfile has an outdated record in it so half your users
> are getting timeouts. Whatever it is, it's almost certainly going to
> be managed by a text file in /etc, so you need to edit that file.
> 
> How do you edit a file on a remote computer? How do you compare three
> instances of that file on different computers to see if one of them is
> different?

I've no idea where you're going with this.

Remember my original complaint was in treating keyboard entry like a 
file complete with EOF marker.

>> They were a creation of either C, Unix, or some combination. Certainly I had
>> very little to with any of that for decades. I can't remember that it ever
>> stopped me doing anything I needed to do.
> 
> That's Blub. You've never used it, so you don't understand its value,
> so you scorn it.

OK, that works both ways as you've never used any of my stuff.

>>   print #w, "Four"      # to window or control w
>>   print #b, "Five"      # to image b

> I'm not sure what printing to a window or image would mean, or how
> it's useful,

It displayed the text at the current position (using the current font, 
size and colour) and moved the current position to the end of the text.

-- 
bartc