Fonts and asceticism

[user1111]

Puppy Forum doesn't have a flag waving saying it supports Ukraine,

Come on, rufwoof, relax at last. Tell us better which fonts you prefer.

Just don't do it in the style of "I don't like vector fonts, but bitmap fonts... the letters of which depict dead Russians hanged, and the letter "T" is suitable for the crucifixion of Russians instead of Christ"

I stick with bulk standard DeJaVu Sans for jwm menus, gui chrome defaults that IIRC are Noto

For console/framebuffer Terminus

For BBS's I use a bbs.28.psf.gz font as from a console/terminal that displays more correctly

[geo_c]

For console/framebuffer Terminus

For BBS's I use a bbs.28.psf.gz font as from a console/terminal that displays more correctly

Whoa! What are you doing there? Is that some kind of Linx browser? Or just Terminus, which I just looked up. I like that!

[Grey]

Although @rufwoof is the sharpest Russophobe on the forum ...
I have to admit that he is the most ascetic. So I give him the first prize, a cake and vodka (it's NOT Russian vodka, well, that's what it says on the bottle ).
From our table terminal to your terminal

for_asceticism.gif (96.98 KiB) Viewed 1736 times

[backi]

@Grey

[user1111]

For console/framebuffer Terminus

For BBS's I use a bbs.28.psf.gz font as from a console/terminal that displays more correctly

Whoa! What are you doing there? Is that some kind of Linx browser? Or just Terminus, which I just looked up. I like that!

The first of my original three images is a Fatdog gui desktop using jwm - actually its a contained version of Fatdog that I run as my daily gui boot, root within that is a highly restricted userid, a separate X session with restricted namespace, capabilities dropped, chroot in a disposable ram session.

The first of those other two is terminal/cli sessions such as via Ctrl-Alt-F2, where that's ssh'd into hashbang (a ssh server) and running tmux with mail (mutt), irc (weechat) and the active window is running lynx, a text based browser. All requests and returns are from hashbang so it look like I'm located where the hashbang servers are located. that lynx session is browsed to the Puppy forum.

The second of those two again is a terminal session where I'd telnet into a BBS. What many people used before the internet. Individuals would set up a BBS that you could access via a phone line that you dialled into and could read/post messages, share files, chat ...etc. Individual BBS's 'tossed' their mail up/down across a lager network of BBS's, so there was connectivity - but in a delayed manner, and all non-graphical. To make the interface more visually appealing sysops tended to create images out of textual character sets, block characters and colour codes (escape sequences) ... ansii art. Nowadays rather than dialling up BBS's people use telnet or ssh. BBS's were very popular at one time, mostly got killed off by the internet but where some persisted - recently there's been a increase in numbers as I guess many tire of the internet becoming increasingly just a google track/trace/advert protocol.

I just used those for examples of how the fonts look.

Terminus font in the first of those two, bbs font in the second of the two.

[user1111]

BBS art uses similar escape sequences as you might use in a terminal such as xterm, urxvt

For instance open a terminal and enter ...

Code: Select all

PS1="\033[0;36m\A\033[0;37m # "

and the prompt should change to display the current time #

Basically \033 is 'escape', [0;36m sets cyan colour \A shows the time, escape 0;37m again changes the colour to light grey, So cyan coloured time with a light grey # prompt.

Some peoples put those sorts of controls into their ~/.profile file along with exporting it so all child processes inherit that control

export PS1= .....

[geo_c]

The first of those other two is terminal/cli sessions such as via Ctrl-Alt-F2, where that's ssh'd into hashbang (a ssh server) and running tmux with mail (mutt), irc (weechat) and the active window is running lynx, a text based browser. All requests and returns are from hashbang so it look like I'm located where the hashbang servers are located. that lynx session is browsed to the Puppy forum.

The second of those two again is a terminal session where I'd telnet into a BBS. What many people used before the internet.

I've used lynx before, though most websites didn't work so well, and I installed mutt one time but didn't have much luck figuring it out. Hashbang is something I recently encountered and don't really have a clue how it works.

I need to take a class or something! I'm so jealous of you real command line geniuses.

[geo_c]

@rufwoof

I'm looking at mutt and trying to figure out if I can install the latest 2.2 version in Fossapup, because the package manager in Fossa, and the Debian package for mutt only go as high as 1.13.2. In other words when I look at the Debian Buster package from the Debian site, it's version 1.10, and the puppy PPM focal package is 1.13.2.

I suppose it's recommended to stick with the latest package built for a particular distro release if I don't want to run into dependency issues.

[williwaw]

I need to take a class or something!

is hashbang.sh an implementation of https://github.com/hashbang/shell-server ?

[Keef]

I signed up at hashbang.sh last year after reading one of rufwoof's posts. Had never used ssh, but like using the terminal. Anyway, only used it tentatively and forgot about it. Tried again recently (after being inspired by another rufwoof post) but keep getting "Permission denied (publickey)". Having to learn all about gpg, which is not a bad thing, but getting nowhere with the login.

[puddlemoon]

@Keef me too, well the first part, being inspired by the terminal wizardry of @rufwoof in general... I haven't tried #! of late but remember it being hard to get back in at some point.
He explains everything very well but for many of us it seems the footnotes, if we were so lucky to have them, would need to be rather long. (:

[rockedge]

Individuals would set up a BBS that you could access via a phone line that you dialed into and could read/post messages, share files, chat ...etc. Individual BBS's 'tossed' their mail up/down across a lager network of BBS's, so there was connectivity - but in a delayed manner, and all non-graphical.

I ran a BBS in the early 90's using Spitfire (MS-DOS) and a single dedicated phone line. Mail eventually got fancy and had the FidoNet that moved mail to addresses on to connected BBS systems. Most BBS's operated only for certain hours per day and the mail packets would be moved around. Towards the time of AOL and Compuserve it was the beginning of the ability to via BBS gateways send email through the "real" Internet.

A friend was also were involved in BBS war strategy games that required going live and sending and receiving packets daily so all of the BBS's that played (like a league) would and could update.

My BBS was a MS-DOS programming board with batch, QuickBasic-4.5, C and Assembly as the main themes. Especially specialty libraries with much more advanced features and functions for QB45 written in Assembly or C +. It was simple to create windows and boxes, enhanced upper and extended memory management, printing and graphics, some binary sorting functions and other quick sort sub-routines. There was a section to upload and download files.

I set up a VirtualBox running MS-DOS 5+ that can run Spitfire which found a copy of somewhere on the net. I have a virtual acoustic coupler (phone modem) that fools Spitfire enough to run. Although DOSBox is much much easier to set up and run which gives good results, I have not tried to get Spitfire to run on DOSBox.

[rockedge]

Seems some BBS stuff works in DOSBox!

Screenshot(14).png (141.56 KiB) Viewed 1673 times

Screenshot(15).png (149.04 KiB) Viewed 1673 times

[geo_c]

I'm posting from lynx right now and it's pretty difficult. I'll keep it
short, because my posts are not taking when I hit the submit button,
and it must have something to do with entering text. So this a test.

I ran across hasbang's existence while exploring some application, and
I was curious but couldn't quite grasp what hashbang server actually is.
Is it a shell environment which commands call to a remote server to execute?

And it appears I found the problem with posting. It seems to have to do with
disabling Markdown, BBCode, or smilies on the forum page. Because after I
did that it worked!

[user1111]

Seems some BBS stuff works in DOSBox!
Screenshot(14).png
Screenshot(15).png

The attached bbs fonts work well for me using urxvt/xterm

Open a terminal
setfont bbs.psf.gz
telnet ... whichever BBS, and the ansii hopefully displays better.

Some BBS's leave you in a black screen after disconnect i.e. the blinking cursor has been turned off, running
tput sgr0 (as in digit zero, not a capital O) sets the terminal/cursor back to how it should be.

bbs.png (211.01 KiB) Viewed 1643 times

[user1111]

I'm posting from lynx right now and it's pretty difficult. I'll keep it
short, because my posts are not taking when I hit the submit button,
and it must have something to do with entering text. So this a test.

I ran across hasbang's existence while exploring some application, and
I was curious but couldn't quite grasp what hashbang server actually is.
Is it a shell environment which commands call to a remote server to execute?

And it appears I found the problem with posting. It seems to have to do with
disabling Markdown, BBCode, or smilies on the forum page. Because after I
did that it worked!

Hashbang runs Debian, so when you have account on that you are just connecting to another box running Linux. Where typically you use ssh to connect to it (and where connection is automatic once you have the ssh keys all set up). So yes a shell/cli access, but where by default they have you drop into a tmux session, so you can open multiple 'windows'. IIRC the default tmux session has mutt (email) and weechat (IRC) windows available. For tmux the default is ctrl-B as a prefix key where ctrl-B n steps to the next window, or enter a number to jump to that window number or ctrl-b c to create another window.

ctrl-b d disconnects from tmux whilst leaving it running in the background, so usually you ctrl-b d to diconnect from tmux and then type exit to disconnect from hashbang. If after having disconnected from tmux you type tmux attach ... it gets you back into the tmux session again.

A nice feature with tmux is that if two or more of you access the same server using the same userid then you all share the same tmux session. Each/any of you can type/control the same thing. Collaboration type desktop.

You can use ssh to also mount remote folders, such as on hashbang or our android phone if its set up with ssh/keys

mkdir /mnt/hashbang
sshfs userid@hashbang...:/home/userid /mnt/hashbang
... type sytax

Simiar for copying files, much like regular cp commands but you add the userid@server details
scp somelocalfile user@server:/home/userid/somefile

[geo_c]

That clears it up. It's something I might want to try one of these days, but
as you know, I'm a mere hobbyist, though it never stopped me before. I seem
to be enjoying using more and more command line/shell script computing. I
recently resurrected my use of Lilypond scoring software, a sheet music en-
graver which is text based, using LaTex. I used it years ago and it produces
the classiest and most readable sheet music around. Not to mention consist-
ent, because all of my settings can be stored in a simple text file later
pasted in. I can achieve what I need with only Lilypond and Geany, but I realized
there was a code editor much like Geany built specifically for Lilypond,
called Frescobaldi, which can import musicXML files from apps like Musescore
I knew I had to get it going again. Its' the first package that I was able
to install by grabbing dependency lists from the debian site and finding
them on the puppy PPM. So that bolstered my confidence quite a bit.

[user1111]

Don't know about Puppy, but in Fatdog you have real multi-user so you can create/use other userids.

Creating a userid and /etc/passwd normally points to what shell that will use by default, the last entry for that userid line in the /etc/passwd file. You can however create your own shell for that, a simple script, maybe just

#!/bin/sh

while :;do
readln
done

saved as /usr/bin/my-shell or whatever and set /etc/passwd for the userid to that (/usr/bin/myshell), has to be executable permissions
chmod +x /usr/bin/myshell

Some systems don't permit just any such shell being used unless its also listed in /etc/shells

If you've setup sshd (ssh server), created maybe userid ssh whose shell is that myshell script then when they login that script is run and in that case just repeatedly reads a line ... and that's all.

Extend it as you like, maybe to test what was typed in and do some action in response.
echo -n "# "
read -n 1
case $n in
g) echo goodbye;;
h) echo "you're looking for help";;
esac

... type code within the while loop perhaps. read -n 1 reads in just a single character

Read up about terminal escape codes where you can set the font colour, text position, or cat somefile.ans where that file contains content/ansii ... etc and you're on the road to creating a very basic BBS or control script.

Set your router to allow ssh traffic through, and you can access that from anywhere. Usually under the port forwarding option where you set port 22 (ssh) to be directed to a particular IP within the local net such as 192.168.1.5

To access from anywhere however you need to know your external IP address, not the 192... number but the likes of whatever https://whatismyipaddress.com/ indicates as being your IP.

As ever however be mindful that others may try to hack into your local network if/when you open up ports.

ssh is encypted data flow, in older times people used just telnet that wasn't encrypted. If the content being transferred isn't critical then it might not matter if others can see it. Some versions of busybox include telnet and telnetd (server) as a possible and simpler alternative to using ssh.

See if you can start
telnetd
and connect to it
telnet localhost
If so then you might like to create a userid for that and set its shell script ... as above.
telnet mytelnetuserid@localhost
...where mytelnetuserid userid has your script set as its shell instead of the usual /bin/sh

[user1111]

I seem to be enjoying using more and more command line/shell script computing. I recently resurrected my use of Lilypond scoring software

Now that more recently I have my android phone also appearing on my laptop, I also should dig out some old telnet codes I had coded to control our cable TV box (change channels/volume etc.) to make a more all-inclusive single controller Answer a call, turn on hands-free/loud speaker and turn down the TV all using the laptop A simple DIY BBS sysytem/screen on the laptop as I outlined earlier to control the TV U)p, D)own volume choices ..etc. on one side of the screen, phone on other side of the screen, maybe on tray page 3

[geo_c]

Now that more recently I have my android phone also appearing on my laptop, I also should dig out some old telnet codes I had coded to control our cable TV box. Answer a call, turn on hands-free/loud speaker and turn down the TV all using the laptop

As I said, you command line geniuses make me jealous. That frankly all makes my head spin. But that doesn't mean I won't be giving it a try at some point. I have booted up Fatdog from my SG2D usb stick a couple of times. It's not puppy, but it's definitely cool.

At the moment I'm interacting on the forum with Lynx Browser and that's a start. I'm posting from Lynx and watching my posts pop up on Palemoon, which I have themed as close to a terminal look as possible.

I don't have years of experience with emacs type keystroke navigation, and so this stuff is kind of slow going for me. But fun nonetheless.

I'm running a laptop and my side monitor is a very square dimension vga as opposed to the usual hdmi, and terminal programs are just so much easier to read than slick modern browsers which I'm always adjusting the zoom. Of course Lynx color-codes text in a way that enhances it. It's all like picking another musical instrument for me. Takes some time to get the muscle memory, but always pays off in the end.

I think I'm hooked.

EDIT: see now my Lynx skills are not capturing that quote of yours correctly!

[rockedge]

EDIT: see now my Lynx skills are not capturing that quote of yours correctly!

Everything is in order....

the reason the quote did not work is those selections at the bottom of the editor page in "Options".
For Lynx to work you disabled BBCode and the "similes" which now cause phpBB's post editor not to parse BBCode which will stop something like [quote][/quote] from working!

I just unchecked those boxes so they work again.