X-Git-Url: https://git.distorted.org.uk/~mdw/sgt/putty/blobdiff_plain/5bcf5d50fb31549f4456bbeba0ebd8635ef737a6..22bf65b33160e1eae32fe06d1ee12b0738ffe523:/doc/faq.but diff --git a/doc/faq.but b/doc/faq.but index 49e415f1..92c7efbe 100644 --- a/doc/faq.but +++ b/doc/faq.but @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -\versionid $Id: faq.but,v 1.55 2004/02/10 18:22:00 simon Exp $ +\versionid $Id: faq.but,v 1.61 2004/02/23 19:10:43 jacob 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, @@ -239,6 +261,9 @@ and certainly isn't yet useful. PuTTY on portable devices would clearly be a useful thing, so in the long term I hope it can be brought up to release quality. +There's a also third-party port at +\W{http://pocketputty.aleq.cz/}\c{http://pocketputty.aleq.cz/}. + \S{faq-win31}{Question} Is there a port to Windows 3.1? PuTTY is a 32-bit application from the ground up, so it won't run on @@ -593,12 +618,11 @@ is liable to lead to problems. \S{faq-psftp-slow}{Question} PSFTP transfers files much slower than PSCP. -We believe this is because the SFTP and SSH2 protocols are less -efficient at bulk data transfer than SCP and SSH1, because every -block of data transferred requires an acknowledgment from the far -end. It would in theory be possible to queue several blocks of data -to get round this speed problem, but as yet we haven't done the -coding. If you really want this fixed, feel free to offer to help. +The throughput of PSFTP 0.54 should be much better than 0.53b and +prior; we've added code to the SFTP backend to queue several blocks +of data rather than waiting for an acknowledgement for each. (The +SCP backend did not suffer from this performance issue because SCP +is a much simpler protocol.) \S{faq-bce}{Question} When I run full-colour applications, I see areas of black space where colour ought to be. @@ -820,6 +844,30 @@ 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 @@ -896,6 +944,36 @@ PuTTY web site? We already have some, thanks. +\S{faq-link}{Question} Would you link to my web site from the PuTTY +web site? + +Only if the content of your web page is of definite direct interest +to PuTTY users. If your content is unrelated, or only tangentially +related, to PuTTY, then the link would simply be advertising for +you. + +One very nice effect of the Google ranking mechanism is that by and +large, the most popular web sites get the highest rankings. This +means that when an ordinary person does a search, the top item in +the search is very likely to be a high-quality site or the site they +actually wanted, rather than the site which paid the most money for +its ranking. + +The PuTTY web site is held in high esteem by Google, for precisely +this reason: lots of people have linked to it simply because they +like PuTTY, without us ever having to ask anyone to link to us. We +feel that it would be an abuse of this esteem to use it to boost the +ranking of random advertisers' web sites. If you want your web site +to have a high Google ranking, we'd prefer that you achieve this the +way we did - by being good enough at what you do that people will +link to you simply because they like you. + +If you have software based on PuTTY, or specifically designed to +interoperate with PuTTY, or in some other way of genuine interest to +PuTTY users, then we will probably be happy to add a link to you on +our Links page. And if you're running a mirror of the PuTTY web +site, we're \e{definitely} interested. + \S{faq-sourceforge}{Question} Why don't you move PuTTY to SourceForge?