From: Miguel de Icaza <mig...@nuclecu.unam.mx>
Subject: Announcing the GNU Midnight Commander 4.0
Date: 1997/06/27
Message-ID: <gnusenet199706271625.LAA17354@athena.nuclecu.unam.mx>
X-Deja-AN: 253700028
Distribution: world
To: g...@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Followup-To: mc-b...@nuclecu.unam.mx
X-Windows: A terminal disease.
Newsgroups: gnu.announce,gnu.utils.bug,comp.os.linux.misc,alt.sources.d,
comp.unix.programmer
Briefly
The GNU Midnight Commander is a Unix file manager and shell, useful
to novice and guru alike. Version 4.0 has many enhancements.
See http://mc.blackdown.org/mc4 for the list of seventy download
sites, including:
* ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx: /linux/local/mc-4.0.tar.gz (the
official site)
* sunsite.mff.cuni.cz: /GNU/mc/mc-4.0.tar.gz (an official
mirror)
* ftp.teuto.de: /lmb/mc/mc-4.0.tar.gz (an official mirror)
* sunsite.unc.edu and mirrors:
Linux/utils/file/managers/mc/mc-4.0.tar.gz (an official
mirror)
* prep.ai.mit.edu and mirrors: /pub/gnu/mc-4.0.tar.gz
MD5 checksum:
1420c696eeff2678199144e38d0ee0aa b mc-4.0.tar.gz
Binaries for various architectures are available in:
* ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx in: /linux/local/bin-dist/
* sunsite.mff.cuni.cz: /GNU/mc/bin-dist/
GNU Midnight Commander is also included on most CD-ROMs containing
GNU software and we expect the publishers of these CD-ROMs to
include MC version 4.0 when they publish the next version of their
CD-ROM.
See also the GNU Midnight Commander website at
http://mc.blackdown.org/mc/
What's new on 4.0
* New hotlist code
+ The bookmark code has been completely revamped and now
it supports folders. New format for the hot list file.
+ It is possible to copy a selected path name into the
input line (C-Enter).
* Tk enhancements.
+ New built-in GUI designer to help developers modify the
look of the program at run time (no penalty for users).
+ Many dialog boxes now work.
+ Right button now pops up a context sensitive action
menu.
+ Added many visual enhancements.
+ The Tk edition is not yet finished though.
* File management
+ Now we do background copy and move operations (you can
ftp your files in the background now, for example).
* Built in text editor (optional)
+ This is an easy to use text editor with pull-down
menus. The features it presently supports are: Block
copy, move, delete, cut, paste; key for key undo; file
insertion; macro definition; regular expression search
and replace (and our own scanf-printf search and
replace); shift-arrow MSW-MAC text highlighting (for
the linux console only); insert-overwrite toggle; and
an option to pipe text blocks through shell commands
like indent.
+ Comes with Emacs keybindings as well.
+ mcedit is a link to mc which bring it up in editor
mode.
* New hex editor
+ Now you can do hex editions in your files with a single
keystroke. (invoke it by using the hex-viewer and then
clicking on edit).
* FTP File system
+ Many fixes and enhacements, better support for proxy
machines.
+ Now we support both active and passive opens.
+ Estimated time of arrival for ftp transfers.
+ stalled detection.
+ Much better support for proxies.
+ ftp URL's now allow a password to be provided.
* ext2fs Undelete File system
+ Minor enhancements.
* TAR File system
+ Now we flush the tarfs if the tar file has been
modified
* External File systems
+ Speeded up RPM file system.
+ New LHA file system.
+ New ARC file system.
+ New DEB file system (for those users of Debian).
+ New RAR file system.
+ Fixed problems with different zipfs.
* MC file system
+ We get can use a mc file system by using either mc: or
mc:// prefixes.
* Viewer changes
+ Now we include a program that preprocesses mail if you
view it so, you get colored mails in the viewer.
+ A simple ruler has been implemented (press Alt-r to
enable it).
* Find file command
+ Now we can search inside files using a piped grep
(particularly interesting to search inside virtual file
system: tar files, tar files on remote ftp sites, or
searching information on an ftp site)
* Widgets
+ Input lines now support control-left, control-right
movement on the Linux console.
* Extension file
+ We now support extra entries in a given rule with the
Include= tag.
* Ports
+ Windows NT, Windows 95 by Juan Grigera
+ OS/2 by Alexander Dong.
* Many many many bug fixes and memory leaks have been fixed.
Longly
The GNU Midnight Commander is a user-friendly yet powerful file
manager and visual shell for Unix systems. For the Unix neophyte
it provides a clear, user-friendly, and somewhat protected
interface to the complexities of a Unix system. For the expert
user, it can make many frequent operations more efficient:
shifting large groups of files around and many other common file
managing tasks. It works with any text terminal, supports also
color terminals and looks very nice (see sample screen shots
available at the web site).
The Commander's current features include:
* General features
+ Full mouse support on xterm and the Linux console.
+ Virtual File System: you now can browse tar, compressed
tar, network file systems, ftp, rpm, lha, arc, deb and
rar directories.
+ A built-in file viewer with ASCII and hex modes, regexp
string searching, optional automatic file
decompression, horizontal scrolling, goto-line,
attributes, growing buffers, piped input, etc.
+ A built-in file editor (see Builtin text editor and New
hex editor in the What's New section above)
+ Hypertext online context-sensitive help.
+ Key bindings have a lot common with other popular
programs like emacs, less and lynx: keys do what you
might expect them to do (C-c to cancel things, C-g for
emacs users, etc.)
* Command execution features
+ Emacs-like command line editing.
+ A history of entered shell commands.
+ An extensible, flexible user-defined menu system.
+ User-defined default actions on files, according to
their name or contents, (for example, you can bind xv
%f to gif files).
+ If you use bash, tcsh or zsh, the Commander will run
with a concurrent shell process and feed all your shell
commands to it, instead of spawning a new shell to run
every command you type. Apart from the gain in speed,
this means that you can use all your usual aliases and
shell functions, as well as job control, command
history, variable substitution, background processes
and so on within the Midnight Commander. You can switch
the Commander's display on and off at any time with a
single keystroke, and when it is off you appear to be
in your usual login shell.
* File management features
+ Powerful mask copying/renaming of files (as in: "rename
s.*.tar.gz source.*.tgz").
+ Secure recursive file deleting, copying and moving
operations.
+ A "directory hotlist" with subfolder support to let you
move to directories you frequently use with very few
keystrokes.
+ Incremental and wrap-around searching for file and
directory names.
+ Directory compare feature.
+ Quick-view mode: automatically display the currently
selected file in the other panel. Uncompression is
performed automatically, and only as needed, so you
never have to wait.
+ A visual "tree" display of directory structures, which
allows you to navigate rapidly through your file system
(you can copy, remove, and move directories within this
mode). The tree is built as you use it, so, again, you
needn't sit there twiddling your thumbs while you wait
for the tree to be built (but you can if you want to
;-)
+ Very powerful find-file feature. File searches can be
interrupted and resumed, and the resulting list of
files can be manipulated usefully within the Commander.
+ External panelize feature. This is somehow generalized
version of find-file, which fills your panel with
output of any command producing newline separated
filenames (find, awk, etc.). You can save often used
commands into a database under certain names (like
'SetUID and SetGID files in cwd').
+ Info view mode: detailed information in the opposite
panel about the currently selected file and current
file system.
+ File and directory management operations: tag, delete,
copy, rename, move, create links (hard and symbolic),
chmod, chown, etc. Detailed information and control is
available during these operations: percentage-done
figures are displayed (only in verbose mode), and you
can stop the operation at any time, skip files, decide
what to do about files which are about to be
overwritten (you can overwrite all, none, do an update
- copy newer files, single file you can skip, overwrite
or append to the destination).
* And it's configurable, too
+ User-definable file listing formats: you can specify
which data fields are to be displayed, their size and
alignment, etc.
+ Screen layout control: the two file panels are
resizable, and can appear side by side or one above the
other. The keybar at the bottom as well as the menu and
the message bars can be removed to save screen space.
+ On Linux, you can specify a certain number of lines at
the bottom of the screen to be used as a command output
area; the Commander will leave output from your shell
commands undisturbed in this area, so you don't have to
use C-o to see it.
+ Message bar: if you are new to the Midnight Commander,
on this line you will see hints about how to use the
program. You can turn this line off, if you get tired
of them.
+ Configurable colors: you can define a default color
scheme, and alternative schemes which are selected
according to the terminal you are using.
+ 8-bit clean support, for viewing national characters
and symbols. 8-bit output is enabled when
`Options/Display Bits...' is set to ISO-8859-1 or Full
8 bits. In order to enable 8-bit input invoke the
Midnight Commander with the -m flag.
+ You can teach the Midnight Commander the key
definitions for your terminal, you don't require root
privileges or to be nice with your sysadmin.
* And there's a lot more.
Requirements
The GNU Midnight Commander currently runs (at least) on Linux 1.0,
through 2.1, NetBSD 1.0, SunOS 4.1, Solaris 2.3, Irix 5.2,
Ultrix 4.3, Aix 3.2.5, A/UX, HP-UX 7, HP-UX 9, UnixWare, Windows
95/NT and OS/2. And since it is configured with GNU autoconf, it
should be straightforward to port it to other systems.
If you are using Linux, you may be interested in getting the gpm
mouse server (to get mouse support on the Linux console) or you
may want to get ncurses for managing your screen instead of the
default Slang screen manager. All of the auxilary packages are
available in ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx, so that you can download them
at the same time as the Commander if you wish. They are:
* ncurses (optional).
+ ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx in /linux/local
+ ftp.netcom.com in /pub/zm/zmbenhal
+ Notes:
Don't get ncurses 1.8.6; it's buggy. If ncurses hasn't
been ported to your system you can try to build the
Commander with the native curses library on your
system. This works well on System V flavored systems,
but it may not be very pretty or even usable on BSD
systems.
* gpm-1.10
+ ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx in /linux/local
+ iride.unipv.it in /pub/gpm
+ Notes:
This is the excellent Linux "General Purpose Mouse"
server; needed if you want mouse support in Linux
virtual consoles.
* rxvt 2.20
+ ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx in /linux/local/rxvt
+ Notes:
This is a fast and small color terminal emulator for X,
the GNU Midnight Commander will autodetect color on this
version of the rxvt program.
* e2fsprogs 1.06
+ ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx in /linux/local/
+ Notes:
This is the ext2 filesystem development library. You
need this if you want to use the undelete support on
Linux.
More Information
WWW page: there is a GNU Midnight Commander page on the World Wide
Web containing instructions, screen snapshots of the program,
links to some relevant FTP sites, archives of the mailing lists,
etc. The URL is:
* http://mc.blackdown.org/mc/
Please send bug reports to: mc-b...@nuclecu.unam.mx
Mailing lists: the following Commander-related lists are
available:
mc
General discussion of the Midnight Commander
mc-digest
The mc list, in digest format
mc-announce
Major announcements about the Commander
mc-patch
The latest Commander patches (4-8 per week)
mc-devel
Technical development discussion (open to everyone, not
just developers)
To subscribe, send e-mail to majord...@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx
with the following line in the body of the message:
* subscribe <list-name> [optional-address]
The MC Development Team
* Miguel de Icaza (mig...@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx)
* Andrej Borsenkow (borsenkow....@sni.de)
* Radek Doulik (r...@earn.cvut.cz)
* Ching Hui (u811...@Oz.nthu.edu.tw)
* Jakub Jelinek (j...@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz)
* Janne Kukonlehto (ja...@mc.blackdown.org)
* Fred Leeflang (fr...@nebula.ow.org)
* Mauricio Plaza (m...@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx)
* Dugan Porter (du...@b011.eunet.es)
* Paul Sheer (psh...@hertz.mech.wits.ac.za)
* Alex I. Tkachenko (Alex.Tkache...@bcs.zaporizhzhe.ua)
* Norbert Warmuth (k3...@fh-sw.de)
Other contributors
* Thomasz Cholewo (tjcho...@mecca.spd.louisville.edu)
* Juan Jose Ciarlante (jjcia...@raiz.uncu.edu.ar)
* Alexander Dong (a...@software-ag.de)
* Erwin van Eijk (wab...@corner.iaf.nl)
* Torben Fjerdingstad (torben.fjerdings...@uni-c.dk)
* Massimo Fontanelli (MC8...@mclink.it)
* Juan Grigera (j-grig...@usa.net)
* Gerd Knorr (kra...@cs.tu-berlin.de)
* Sergey Ya. Korshunoff (r...@seyko.msk.su)
* Jean-Daniel Luiset (lui...@cih.hcuge.ch)
* Wim Osterholt (w...@djo.wtm.tudelft.nl)
* Antonio Palama (pal...@posso.dm.unipi.it)
* Thomas Pundt (pun...@math.uni-muenster.de)
* Marcelo Roccasalva (mfroc...@raiz.uncu.edu.ar)
* Ilya Rybkin (ryb...@rouge.phys.lsu.edu)
* Vadim Sinolitis (v...@nsrd.npi.msu.su)
* Jon Stevens (r...@dolphin.csudh.edu)
* Adam Tla/lka (at...@sunrise.pg.gda.pl)
We would like to thank all of the beta testers from the mc and
mc-devel mailing lists, without their help, this release will
not be possible.
Linux Software Map Entry
This is a standard Linux Software Map entry.
Begin3
Title: GNU Midnight Commander
Version: 4.0
Entered-date: 16JUN97
Description: File manager and visual shell. [More!]
Keywords: file directory manager shell browser utility curses mouse
menu
visual user-friendly color vfs tar ftp gzip rpm lha arc d
eb rar
Author: mig...@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx (Miguel de Icaza)
borsenkow....@sni.de (Andrej Borsenkow)
r...@earn.cvut.cz (Radek Doulik)
u811...@Oz.nthu.edu.tw (Ching Hui)
j...@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz (Jakub Jelinek)
ja...@mc.blackdown.org (Janne Kukonlehto)
fr...@nebula.ow.org (Fred Leeflang)
m...@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx (Mauricio Plaza)
du...@b011.eunet.es (Dugan Porter)
psh...@hertz.mech.wits.ac.za (Paul Sheer)
Alex.Tkache...@bcs.zaporizhzhe. (Alex I. Tkachenko)
k3...@fh-sw.de (Norbert Warmuth)
Maintained-by: mig...@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx (Miguel de Icaza)
Primary-site: ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu
1022k mc-4.0.tar.gz
Alternate-site: ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/file/managers/mc
ftp://ftp.teuto.de/lmb/mc
1022k mc-4.0.tar.gz
Platforms: i386-linux-linux{1.x,2.x}, alpha-linux-linux2,
sparc-linux-linux{2.0,2.1}, sparc64-linux-linux2.1
mips-dec-ultrix4.3, mips-sgi-irix5.2,
rs6000-ibm-aix3.2.5, sparc-sun-sunos4.1,
sparc-sun-netbsd1.0, sparc-sun-solaris2.[345],
hppa-hp-hpux9, hppa-hp-hpux7, m68k-apple-aux,
unixware, mc88110-aviion-dgux5.4R2.01,
i386-unknown-sco3.2v4.2, i386-unknown-sco3.2v5
i386-unknown-nt, i386-unknown-windows95,
i386-unkown-os2.
If mouse support is required on the Linux
console, then the GPM mouse server
(available at iride.unipv.it:/pub/gpm)
(ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx:/linux/local)
Copying-policy: GPL
End
[ Most GNU software is packed using the GNU `gzip' compression program.
Source code is available on most sites distributing GNU software.
For information on how to order GNU software on tape or cd-rom, and
printed GNU manuals, check the file etc/ORDERS in the GNU Emacs
distribution, ftp the file /pub/gnu/GNUinfo/ORDERS on prep, or
e-mail a request to: g...@prep.ai.mit.edu
By ordering your GNU software from the FSF, you help us continue to
develop more free software. Media revenues are our primary source of
support. Donations to FSF are deductible on US tax returns.
The above software will soon be at these ftp sites as well.
Please try them before prep.ai.mit.edu as prep is very busy!
A possibly more up-to-date list is at URL
http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/order/ftp.html
thanx -...@prep.ai.mit.edu
ASIA: ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp, tron.um.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pub/GNU/prep
cair-archive.kaist.ac.kr/pub/gnu, ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/mirrors/gnu
AUSTRALIA: archie.au/gnu (archie.oz or archie.oz.au for ACSnet)
AFRICA: ftp.sun.ac.za/pub/gnu
MIDDLE-EAST: ftp.technion.ac.il/pub/unsupported/gnu
EUROPE: ftp.irisa.fr/pub/gnu, ftp.univ-lyon1.fr/pub/gnu,
ftp.mcc.ac.uk, unix.hensa.ac.uk/mirrors/uunet/systems/gnu,
src.doc.ic.ac.uk/gnu, ftp.ieunet.ie/pub/gnu, ftp.eunet.ch,
sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/gnu, ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/gnu, ftp.nl.net,
ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/gnu, ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de,
ftp.germany.eu.net/packages/gnu, ftp.etsimo.uniovi.es/pub/gnu,
ftp.funet.fi/pub/gnu, ftp.denet.dk, ftp.stacken.kth.se, isy.liu.se,
ftp.luth.se/pub/unix/gnu, ftp.sunet.se/pub/gnu, archive.eu.net
SOUTH AMERICA: ftp.inf.utfsm.cl/pub/gnu, ftp.unicamp.br/pub/gnu
WESTERN CANADA: ftp.cs.ubc.ca/mirror2/gnu
USA: wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/gnu, labrea.stanford.edu,
ftp.digex.net/pub/gnu, ftp.kpc.com/pub/mirror/gnu, f.ms.uky.edu/pub3/gnu,
jaguar.utah.edu/gnustuff, ftp.hawaii.edu/mirrors/gnu,
uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/gnu, ftp.cs.columbia.edu/archives/gnu/prep,
archive.cis.ohio-state.edu/pub/gnu, gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/GNU,
ftp.uu.net/systems/gnu
]