Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> To summarize, BL3 now has:
> --------------------------
> wordprocessor (AbiWord)
> spreadsheet (sc)
> database (SQLite)
> presentation (MagicPoint)
> GUI browser (links2)
> GUI mail client (sylpheed)
> file manager (mc)
> secure shell (ssh)
> --------------------------
>
> Are we missing any important applications?

This is really great, Steven.  Even though I've got little to no time for
BL stuff these days, I read anxiously about development and admire what
you're doing.  Your list looks to me like it includes all the basic
necessities for computer users of today.

As a sort of frill, I'd like to add a bit about a program I've mentioned
in the past as perhaps being suitable for BL and which I've been using
lately.  Unfortunately, owing to certain constraints, I am not using it on
a BL system.  But I want to report on it nonetheless, since BL seems like
the right "market" for it.  The program is called "Twin."  It is a console
program that allows creation of virtual terminals within a single console.
It's billed as a sort of xwindows for the console.  So, instead of having
numerous tty's open and switching between them with ctrl-alt-Fx keys, all
terminals and their console programs can be open in a single console.
Right now, for example, I have Pine, elinks, two instances of mc (1 root,
1 user), lynx and a couple of terminals open in Twin.  A slight
modification to the config file has allowed me to map the alt-tab sequence
to cycle between terminals.  So I can sit here and alt-tab - very quickly
- between all my open console programs.  Terminals can be resized and
dragged around the screen as well: gpm needs to be installed and
configured if one wants mouse functionality, I should mention.  With gpm,
one can copy and paste text between terminals as well (maybe there's a way
to do this without a mouse as well - haven't looked into that).  I'm very
happy with Twin and its performance.  Perhaps other BL users would want to
look into it?  So far as I know, it comes only as source and so would need
to be compiled for BL.  It's very light on dependencies. "ldd twin" gives
the following output:

libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0x40020000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

Don't know if those exclude it as a BL candidate or not.  At the risk of
making further vain promises or idle threats, if I get some time, I may
try compiling it for BL.  If I don't, and if others look at it and find it
interesting as well, perhaps they'd like to try compiling it?  The link
for the mainpage, with some screenshots, is here:
http://linuz.sns.it/~max/twin/

James