Letters from the TildeVerse

When connecting to a tilde server, it can be pretty helpful to use a terminal multiplexer. Much easier than having to connect twice, and juggle with multiple tabs or panes in my terminal emulator (for that matter, it can be useful to run a multiplexer locally, too). Conveniently, on Ctrl-C we have a full suite: Screen and tmux, plus the byobu front-end. I tried the latter first, because it has that fancy colorful status line, and uses the function keys. But that turned out to interfere with Midnight Commander, and from Android it's tricky to use function keys at all. Pretty sure there were other issues too, like with scrolling in certain apps.

For a while I just gave up, figuring that in case of need I can use Micro or NeoVim, both of which have built-in terminal emulators and window management. But seriously? There must be a better way. Sure enough, the old Screen is now much more capable than I remembered it, and it still has more intuitive keyboard shortcuts than the competition. Definitely worth another try. Note to self: check out known apps again from time to time, and don't just settle for doing things the hard way.

Okay, it's more like this month, but in the same spirit: did you know that here on Ctrl-C.club we have alternatives to all the usual applications? For example Vim and NeoVim, or Mutt and NeoMutt. So you can try both and see which you like best. It matters: for example vim works well in ConnectBot, nvim not so much. Both are fine in other terminal emulators.

In tangential news, it turns out Lynx comes bundled with comprehensive documentation that it displays if you start it without arguments, so you can learn a lot about it without even going online. Edit: by the way, did you know Lynx has a nice file manager built in? I keep forgetting. You can see it by passing a directory name on the command line.

For the past few years I've been working on a series of desktop tools. Naturally, I made some experiments with UI design. Let me tell you something.

You know the typical window with File / Edit / View / Help menus and a toolbar with icons? It exists for a reason. People who knew what they were doing refined it over many years. And then... a bunch of kiddies thought they were smarter. They started fooling around with hamburger menus. It's been downhill since.

Don't be like them. Want to experiment? Great. But start from the tried-and-true.

In order to use Clinklog on Ctrl-C.club, I had to make a new, modified version. This is because Clinklog 2 generates a ton of web pages (easily dozens or hundreds once you have enough data), and here on the server we have a script called newstuff that checks what's new and updated in everyone's public directories. So many files at once would thoroughly swamp its feed, ruining things for everyone. Please use the Lite edition instead; documentation and everything coming soon.