How to Get Top level menus to open (Left, File, Options, Comand, Right)?

[Pavel Roskin]

Hi, Richard!

> I'm using mc 4.5.0 (at the moment because I can't resolve the GLIB problem
> right now) on RedHat 6.2 i86 and I'm using two different ssh terminals
> (putty and SecureCRT) that go through gateways to get to the system that
> hosts mc.

RedHat 6.2 comes with glib-1.2.6 and mc-4.5.42.  It's much better than
mc-4.5.0.  Install them from the distribution.

> When I run mc from a Gnome XTerm, everything works fine of course. But in
> general from the remote terminals, I am not getting X or Mouse actions.
>
> 1.  How do I get the "Left" menu - or any of the other menus to open without
> the mouse working?  I can't use function keys.  I can't use Alt-Tab because
> that's Windows. I can use any control key.  I can use Esc, and I seem to be
> able to use Alt keys.

Esc-1 is F1, Esc-2 is F2, ... Esc-9 is F9 and Esc-0 is F10.

Just press Esc, release it, then press the number.

> 2.  Are you familiar with these or other ASCII terminal emulators?
> o  It's unlikely that I can get either of these to perform X Server funtions
> on their own - although SecureCRT claims to have X11 forwarding capability
> (if you have another X Server).

You should be able to redefine keys in MC by using "learn keys" in the
manu.

> o  In Putty, when I turn XTerm mouse actions on, it does highlight each of
> the top level menu names and it also highlights the scrollbar - but the
> menus fail to open and the scroll bar doesn't scroll.  For instance, if I
> click on the word "Left" and then click the center button five times, the
> command prompt line reads:
>
>     bash$ LeftLeftLeftLeftLeft

Mouse doesn't work over telnet/rsh/ssh.

> 3.  I can't map keys to get the menus to open either because I can't get the
> Options menu open in the first place to get to the key mapping capability.

Esc 9 O K

> 4.  Is there a complete list of all keyboard actions somewhere?  I've
> learned quite a bit by hunting around - such as the miraculous Alt-? which
> allegedly does a tree fgrep search. But *not* how to get top level menus
> open.

It's not fgrep, it's egrep.  You can search for things like `(foo|bar)'
(i.e. `foo' or `bar').

We probably need shortcuts for the menu and "learn keys" in the future
versions.  Also escape sequences for F11-F20 should be added.

> 5.  Is there a FAQ that applies to using mc (and/or similar programs) with
> terminal emulators?

File named `FAQ' in the MC sources is exactly that.  It's a bit outdated,
but it does document Esc-number sequences.

> MC is is miraculous in it's appearance similarity to Norton - on putty for
> instance, when I start it with mc -c.  It looks just like it should.  I just
> wish I could press Alt-F or something and have the File menu open up...

I agree, MC should use more shortcuts.  But support for Alt-F would be
inconsistent - Alt-C won't open "Commands" because it's already taken for
"Quick cd".

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin