From b86e68d8ecc43300ba9c292436a3660049867e6f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: simon Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 14:38:42 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Couple of new FAQ questions: `what's the point of the Unix port' and `why does scrollback no longer work when I run screen'. git-svn-id: svn://svn.tartarus.org/sgt/putty@3868 cda61777-01e9-0310-a592-d414129be87e --- doc/faq.but | 48 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 47 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/doc/faq.but b/doc/faq.but index 0abbc44f..f04e7190 100644 --- a/doc/faq.but +++ b/doc/faq.but @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -\versionid $Id: faq.but,v 1.59 2004/02/13 12:19:26 jacob Exp $ +\versionid $Id: faq.but,v 1.60 2004/02/16 14:38:42 simon Exp $ \A{faq} PuTTY FAQ @@ -232,6 +232,28 @@ Note that Unix PuTTY has mostly only been tested on Linux so far; portability problems such as BSD-style ptys or different header file requirements are expected. +\S{faq-unix-why}{Question} What's the point of the Unix port? Unix +has OpenSSH. + +All sorts of little things. \c{pterm} is directly useful to anyone +who prefers PuTTY's terminal emulation to \c{xterm}'s, which at +least some people do. Unix Plink has apparently found a niche among +people who find the complexity of OpenSSL makes OpenSSH hard to +install (and who don't mind Plink not having as many features). Some +users want to generate a large number of SSH keys on Unix and then +copy them all into PuTTY, and the Unix PuTTYgen should allow them to +automate that conversion process. + +There were development advantages as well; porting PuTTY to Unix was +a valuable path-finding effort for other future ports, and also +allowed us to use the excellent Linux tool +\W{http://valgrind.kde.org/}{Valgrind} to help with debugging, which +has already improved PuTTY's stability on \e{all} platforms. + +However, if you're a Unix user and you can see no reason to switch +from OpenSSH to PuTTY/Plink, then you're probably right. We don't +expect our Unix port to be the right thing for everybody. + \S{faq-wince}{Question} Will there be a port to Windows CE or PocketPC? It's currently being worked on, but it's only in its early stages yet, @@ -819,6 +841,30 @@ If you really want to change the character set used by the server, the right place is \c{/etc/sysconfig/i18n}, but this shouldn't be necessary. +\S{faq-screen}{Question} Since I upgraded to PuTTY 0.54, the +scrollback has stopped working when I run \c{screen}. + +PuTTY's terminal emulator has always had the policy that when the +\q{alternate screen} is in use, nothing is added to the scrollback. +This is because the usual sorts of programs which use the alternate +screen are things like text editors, which tend to scroll back and +forth in the same document a lot; so (a) they would fill up the +scrollback with a large amount of unhelpfully disordered text, and +(b) they contain their \e{own} method for the user to scroll back to +the bit they were interested in. We have generally found this policy +to do the Right Thing in almost all situations. + +Unfortunately, \c{screen} is one exception: it uses the alternate +screen, but it's still usually helpful to have PuTTY's scrollback +continue working. The simplest solution is to go to the Features +control panel and tick \q{Disable switching to alternate terminal +screen}. (See \k{config-features-altscreen} for more details.) + +The reason why this only started to be a problem in 0.54 is because +\c{screen} typically uses an unusual control sequence to switch to +the alternate screen, and previous versions of PuTTY did not support +this sequence. + \H{faq-secure} Security questions \S{faq-publicpc}{Question} Is it safe for me to download PuTTY and -- 2.11.0