[1048] in linux-announce channel archive
Midnight Commander 3.0
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lars Wirzenius)
Sat Sep 16 12:21:44 1995
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 00:27:59 +0300
From: Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi>
To: linux-announce@vger.rutgers.edu
From: miguel@sphinx.nuclecu.unam.mx (Miguel de Icaza)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Subject: Midnight Commander 3.0
Organization: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Keywords: file directory manager shell browser utility slang curses mouse menu visual user-friendly color vfs tar ftp gzip
Approved: linux-announce@news.ornl.gov (Lars Wirzenius)
Followup-to: comp.os.linux.development.apps
Announcing...
THE GNU MIDNIGHT COMMANDER V3.0
Briefly
The Midnight Commander is a Unix file manager and shell, useful to
novice and guru alikes. Version 3.0 has many major enhancements. It is
available by FTP from the following sites:
* ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx: /linux/local/mc-3.0.tar.gz (the official
site)
* sunsite.unc.edu and mirrors:
Linux/utils/file/managers/mc-3.0.tar.gz
* prep.ai.mit.edu and mirrors: /pub/gnu/mc-3.0.tar.gz
MD5 checksum:
6b9b8fc224239bbc4737e470594151de b mc-3.0.tar.gz
Binaries for various architectures are available in:
* ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx in: /linux/local/bin-dist.
_________________________________________________________________
What's new on 3.0
Virtual file system.
You can now browse tar, compressed tar and file systems over the
network (mcfs and ftp remote sites) as if they were local directories.
Slang support
Now the Slang screen manager is part of the distribution, you don't
need to get ncurses anymore (but you can still compile with ncurses if
you want).
Resizing the program on an xterm now works (thanks to Slang).
New more versatile mc.ext format.
Append option if you try to copy/move onto already existing file.
Internal cd command uses CDPATH variable if set (like in bash).
Find file command has been optimized and it is much faster.
External panelize command
you can use any external command to produce filenames to list in a
directory panel.
Learn keys feature to teach mc to work with your keyboard.
An alternate, advanced chown command.
C-PgDn and C-PgUp takes you to the previous and currently selected
directory respectively on the Linux console.
You can choose between 7 data bits, iso-latin-1 (32-126 + 160-255) or
full 8 data bits (32-126 + 129-255).
User-toggleable confirmations for overwriting, deleting and exiting
added.
Viewer has growing buffers (works faster).
Filename, username, hostname and variable completion (M-Tab) on all
input lines plus command completion on appropriate places of the
command line.
Following symlinks at changing directory.
Viewer supports bold faces and underlines, and it fits the information
on the screen better. Now you can also specify the starting mode for
the viewer depending on the contents of the file to be viewed.
Mask rename and copy for converting filenames according to some rule.
Color configuration now lets you to specify the intensity of colors
you want.
A hint facility to let you remember all of the new features.
Longly
The Midnight Commander (previous name: Mouseless Commander) is a
user-friendly yet powerful file manager and visual shell for Unix
systems. For the Unix neophyte it provides a clear, user-friendly, and
somewhat protected interface to the complexities of a Unix system. For
the expert user, it can make many frequent operations more efficient:
shifting large groups of files around and many other common file
managing tasks. It works with any text terminal, supports also color
terminals and looks very nice (see sample screen shots).
The Commander's current features include:
* General features
+ Full mouse support on xterm and the Linux console.
+ Virtual File System: you now can browse tar, compressed tar,
network file systems and FTP directories.
+ A built-in file viewer with ASCII and hex modes, regexp
string searching, optional automatic file decompression,
horizontal scrolling, goto-line, attributes, growing buffers,
piped input, etc.
+ Hypertext online context-sensitive help.
+ General user interface improvements: more keys do what you
might expect them to do (C-c to cancel things, C-g for emacs
users, etc.)
* Command execution features
+ Emacs-like command line editing.
+ A history of entered shell commands.
+ An extensible, flexible user-defined menu system.
+ User-defined default actions on files, according to their
name or contents, (for example, you can bind xv %f to gif
files).
+ If you use bash, tcsh or zsh, the Commander will run with a
concurrent shell process and feed all your shell commands to
it, instead of spawning a new shell to run every command you
type. Apart from the gain in speed, this means that you can
use all your usual aliases and shell functions, as well as
job control, command history, variable substitution,
background processes and so on. You can switch the
Commander's display on and off at any time with a single
keystroke, and when it is off you appear to be in your usual
login shell.
* File management features
+ Mask copying/renaming of files (as in: "rename s.*.tar.gz
source.*.tgz").
+ Secure recursive file deleting, copying and moving
operations.
+ A "directory hotlist" to let you move to directories you
frequently use with very few keystrokes.
+ Incremental and wrap-around searching for file and directory
names.
+ Directory compare feature.
+ Quick-view mode: automatically display the currently selected
file in the other panel. Uncompression is performed
automatically, and only as needed, so you never have to wait.
+ A visual "tree" display of directory structures, which allows
you to navigate rapidly through your file system (you can
copy, remove, and move directories within this mode). The
tree is built as you use it, so, again, you needn't sit there
twiddling your thumbs while you wait for the tree to be built
(but you can if you want to ;-)
+ Re-written, vastly improved find-file feature. File searches
can be interrupted and resumed, and the resulting list of
files can be manipulated usefully within the Commander.
+ New external panelize feature. This is somehow generalized
version of find-file, which fills your panel with output of
any command producing newline separated filenames (find, awk,
etc.). You can save often used commands into an database
under certain names (like 'SetUID and SetGID files in cwd').
+ Info view mode: detailed information in the other panel about
the currently selected file and current file system.
+ File and directory management operations: tag, delete, copy,
rename, move, create links (hard and symbolic), chmod, chown,
etc. Detailed information and control is available during
these operations: percentage-done figures are displayed (only
in verbose mode), and you can stop the operation at any time,
skip files, decide what to do about files which are about to
be overwritten (you can overwrite all, none, do an update -
copy newer files, single file you can skip, overwrite or
append to the destination).
* And it's configurable, too
+ User-definable file listing formats: you can specify which
data fields are to be displayed, their size and alignment,
etc.
+ Screen layout control: the file panels are resizable, and can
appear side by side or one above the other. The keybar at the
bottom as well as the menu and the message bars can be
removed to save screen space.
+ On Linux, you can specify a certain number of lines at the
bottom of the screen to be used as a command output area; the
Commander will leave output from your shell commands
undisturbed in this area, so you don't have to use C-o to see
it.
+ Message bar: if you are new to the Midnight Commander, on
this line you will see hints about how to use the program.
You can turn this line off, if you get tired of them.
+ Configurable colors: you can define a default color scheme,
and alternative schemes which are selected according to the
terminal you are using.
+ 8-bit clean support, for viewing national characters and
symbols.
+ You can teach the Midnight Commander the key definitions for
your terminal, you don't require root privileges or to be
nice with your sysadmin.
* And there's a lot more.
Requirements
The Midnight Commander currently runs (at least) on Linux 1.0, through
1.3, NetBSD 1.0, SunOS 4.1, Solaris 2.3, Irix 5.2, Ultrix 4.3, Aix
3.2.5, A/UX, HP-UX 7, HP-UX 9, UnixWare. And since it is configured
with GNU autoconf, it should be straightforward to port it to other
systems.
If you are using Linux, you may be interested in getting the gpm mouse
server (to get mouse support on the Linux console) or you may want to
get ncurses for managing your screen instead of the default Slang
screen manager. All of the auxilary packages are available in
ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx, so that you can download them at the same time as
the Commander if you wish. They are:
* ncurses (optional).
+ ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx in /linux/local
+ ftp.netcom.com in /pub/zm/zmbenhal
+ Notes:
Don't get ncurses 1.8.6; it's buggy. If ncurses hasn't been
ported to your system you can try to build the Commander with
the native curses library on your system. This works well on
System V flavored systems, but it may not be very pretty or
even usable on BSD systems.
* gpm-0.97
+ ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx in /linux/local
+ iride.unipv.it in /pub/gpm
+ Notes:
This is the excellent Linux "General Purpose Mouse" server;
needed if you want mouse support in Linux virtual consoles.
* rxvt 2.11
+ space.mit.edu in /pub/davis
+ Notes:
This is a fast and small color terminal emulator for X, the
Midnight Commander will autodetect color on this version of
the rxvt program.
More Information
WWW page: there is a Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web
containing screen snapshots of the program, links to some relevant FTP
sites, archives of the mailing lists, etc. The URL is:
* http://stekt.oulu.fi/~jtklehto/mc/
Please send bug reports to: mc-bugs@nuclecu.unam.mx
Mailing lists: the following Commander-related lists are available:
mc
General discussion of the Midnight Commander
mc-digest
The mc list, in digest format
mc-announce
Major announcements about the Commander
mc-patch
The latest Commander patches (4-8 per week)
mc-devel
Technical development discussion (open to all comers)
To subscribe, send e-mail to majordomo@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx with
the following line in the body of the message:
* subscribe <list-name> [optional-address]
The MC Development Team
* Radek Doulik (rodo@earn.cvut.cz)
* Ching Hui (u811563@Oz.nthu.edu.tw)
* Miguel de Icaza (miguel@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx)
* Jakub Jelinek (jj@gnu.ai.mit.edu)
* Janne Kukonlehto (jtklehto@paju.oulu.fi)
* Fred Leeflang (fredl@nebula.ow.nl)
* Mauricio Plaza (mok@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx)
* Dugan O. Porter (dugan@b011.eunet.es)
Beta testers, and other contributors:
* John Davis (davis@space.mit.edu)
* Torben Fjerdingstad (tfj@olivia.ping.dk)
* Massimo Fontanelli (mc8737@mclink.it)
* Steven Hirsch (hirsch@emba.uvm.edu)
* Jean-Daniel Luiset (luiset@cih.hcuge.ch)
* Thanh Ma (tma@encore.com)
* Mark Olesen (olesen@weber.me.queensu.ca)
* Wim Osterholt (wim@djo.wtm.tudelft.nl)
* Thomas Pundt (pundtt@math.uni-muenster.de)
* Hugh Redelmeier (hugh@mimosa.com)
* Alessandro Rubini (rubini@iride.unipv.it)
* Vadim Sinolitis (vvs@nsrd.npi.msu.su)
* Jon Stevens (root@dolphin.csudh.edu)
* Michael Schmidt (mschmidt@koblenz.fh-rpl.de)
* Marcelo Roccasalva and Juan Jose Ciarlante
(jjciarla@raiz.uncu.edu.ar)
We would like to thank all of the beta testers from the mc and
mc-devel mailing lists, without their help, we wouldn't be
releasing this program.
Linux Software Map Entry
This is a standard Linux Software Map entry.
Begin3
Title: Midnight Commander
Version: 3.0
Entered-date: 31AUG95
Description: File manager and visual shell. [More!]
Keywords: file directory manager shell browser utility curses mouse menu
visual user-friendly color vfs tar ftp gzip
Author: rodo@earn.cvut.cz (Radek Doulik)
u811563@Oz.nthu.edu.tw (Ching Hui)
miguel@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx (Miguel de Icaza)
jj@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Jakub Jelinek)
jtklehto@paju.oulu.fi (Janne Kukonlehto)
fredl@nebula.ow.nl (Fred Leeflang)
mok@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx (Mauricio Plaza)
dugan@b011.eunet.es (Dugan Orlando Porter)
Maintained-by: miguel@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx (Miguel de Icaza)
Primary-site: ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu
741k mc-3.0.tar.gz
Alternate-site: ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/file/managers
ftp://didus.cvut.cz/pub/mc
http://stekt.oulu.fi/~jtklehto/mc/mc-mirror
741k mc-3.0.tar.gz
Platforms: i386-linux-linux1.[0123],
mips-dec-ultrix4.3, mips-sgi-irix5.2,
rs6000-ibm-aix3.2.5, sparc-sun-sunos4.1,
sparc-sun-netbsd1.0, sparc-sun-solaris2.3,
hppa-hp-hpux9, hppa-hp-hpux7, m68k-apple-aux,
unixware, mc88110-aviion-dgux5.4R2.01,
i386-unknown-sco3.2v4.2
If mouse support is required on the Linux
console, then the GPM mouse server
(available at iride.unipv.it:/pub/gpm)
(ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx:/linux/local)
Copying-policy: GPL
End
--
miguel@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx
The Midnight Commander: http://stekt.oulu.fi/~jtklehto/mc/
--
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PLEASE remember a short description of the software.
