Mouse-Enabled Linux/UNIX Text Applications

OK, I've been teaching folks how to create Web pages on Linux and UNIX servers since 1994, with a strong emphasis on editing bare HTML directly on the server, using telnet (early on) and SSH (now). One of the serious problems I've encountered from the outset is folks who never learned to do command-line computing—I realize not everyone learned computers when you had to write all your own programs in Dartmouth Time-Sharing Basic like I did, but I have had many people in classes who did not even know there WAS a command line, let alone how to use it. A while back I discovered the existance of eLinks, an open source, mouse-enabled text-based Web browser with support for frames. Then tonight, despite years of peripheral awareness of its existance, I really played with the venerable old program Midnight Commander (mc) for the first time in an SSH session to a Linux server. Midnight Commander is a two-column, psuedo-GUI file manager with a broad range of tools and capabilities. I had seen it before because my Dad ran it on his Amiga (or a near-exact clone), but I had not used either the text editor or the FTP functionality in the program. If you're a Linux or Solaris user who accesses your system via telnet (you should stop that and use SSH) or SSH, and you've not seen mc on your system, you should give it a try. Every installation of Linux and Solaris that I checked had this installed. I'm certainly going to use for teaching in the future.

eLinks screenshot

Midnight Commander screenshot

Midnight Commander in text-edit mode

The mouse functionality works in both Secure CRT and PuTTY. I wonder if there are other mouse-enabled text apps for Linux out there that I'm not aware of?

Posted by trygstad | Category: InfoTech | 11:19 PM