I've been using Unix-type systems for a while now, but I'm still learning things I should have known a long time ago. One I just came across now was the screen program, which transforms one terminal into many, and will disengage the new terminal that screen provides from the tty, so that you could reattach to terminal sessions even when your window closes.
This is very useful for me, since I'm always using emacs on the terminal, as well as the non-terminal Mac emacs app. On the non-terminal emacs app, the meta key maps to the apple key. On the terminal, the apple key has other meanings. So when I want to cut text, if I forget and use the apple key on the terminal, and I type Apple-w, it closes the window. After a fair bit of cussing, I have to resume everything I was doing in a new terminal. Now, if I use the screen program, I can resume it as if nothing ever happened.
At least I think so. If not, there will be much more cussing, I promise.
One problem, however, is that some apps think the terminal is now non-functional, while others add color where they hadn't before. Nothing important is blocked yet, so I'm still happy with this find.
Posted by ahyatt at September 11, 2003 09:18 PM