GNU Screen settings

Intro

This is a git repository to hold the settings files for GNU screen. It contains four different branches;

1. One that is generic (main)
2. One that is specific to macOS (macos)
3. One that is specific to Linux-based computers, where the user has access like a personal computer (linux-local)
4. And one that is specific to Linux clusters, using SLURM manager (slurm)

The difference of four three branches is that they contain a different screenrc file. Additionally, the macos, linux-local, and slurm branches, contain some extra files to be used with the backtick command of GNU Screen.

The README file at each branch, offers detailed information about the peculiarities of the branch.

Table of contents

1. How to use the files

2. Explanation of screen file

   1. Deactivation of the start-up message
   2. Definition of Vim-like navigation between windows
   3. Similar, Vim-like, resizing of windows
   4. Setting-up of hardstatus
   5. Small fixes for appearance
   6. Declaration of color handling
   7. Activation/deactivation of hardstatus line

How to use the files

Before you start, make sure that you have a back up of your current .screenrc file, by doing

$ mv ~/.screenrc ~/.screenrc_bak

---

To use the files in this branch of the repository, clone the current branch to your home directory by doing

$ git clone git@github.com:dr-costas/myscreen_files.git

Then, change the name of the created directory, so you will not see it (as it happens by default with the .screenrc file), by doing

$ mv ~/myscreen_files ~/.myscreen_files

Finally, add a symbolik link of the myscreen_files/screenrc file where GNU Screen expects to find it, by doing

$ ls -s ~/.myscreen_files/screenrc ~/.screenrc

Explanation of screenrc file

The screenrc of this branch consists of the following sections:

1. Deactivation of the start-up message
2. Definition of Vim-like navigation between windows
3. Similar, Vim-like, resizing of windows
4. Setting-up of hardstatus
5. Small fixes for appearance
6. Declaration of color handling
7. Activation/deactivation of hardstatus line

All the above are explained in the following sections.

Deactivation of the start-up message

This is performed with the line:

startup_message off

The normal behavior would be to have a message like:

GNU Screen version 4.08.00 (GNU) 05-Feb-20

Copyright (c) 2018-2020 Alexander Naumov, Amadeusz Slawinski Copyright (c) 2015-2017 Juergen Weigert, Alexander Naumov, Amadeusz Slawinski Copyright (c) 2010-2014 Juergen Weigert, Sadrul Habib Chowdhury Copyright (c) 2008-2009 Juergen Weigert, Michael Schroeder, Micah Cowan, Sadrul Habib Chowdhury Copyright (c) 1993-2007 Juergen Weigert, Michael Schroeder Copyright (c) 1987 Oliver Laumann

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program (see the file COPYING); if not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/, or contact Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02111-1301 USA.

Send bugreports, fixes, enhancements, t-shirts, money, beer & pizza to screen-devel@gnu.org

If you want disable this message, then you should use the above mentioned command for screen in the screenrc.

Vim-like navigation

With the current screenrc file, the navigation between the different split windows, happens with Vim-like key mappings. That is

• j is for down,
• k for up,
• l for right, and
• h for left

To do the navigation, the command/control sequence of GNU Screen has to be pressed first, i.e.

ctrl-a j

to go down.

This Vim-like navigation, is set by the commands:

bind j focus down    # Ctl-a j goes down
bind k focus up      # Ctl-a k goes up
bind l focus right   # Ctl-a l goes right
bind h focus left    # Ctl-a h goes left

Vim-like resizing of windows

When having multiple windows in the same time, in any combination of vertical and horizontal splitting, you can resize them using (again) Vim-like key combinations. The difference with the navigation is that at the resizing, the j, k, l, and h, have to be capital case. That is,

ctrl-a J

resizes the window and does not navigate you (notice the J).

The full list of resizing combinations is

bind L resize -h +10  # Increase horizontally by 10
bind H resize -h -10  # Decrease horizontally by 10
bind K resize -v +10  # Increase vertically by 10
bind J resize -v -10  # Decrease vertically by 10

You change the step size (i.e. the 10) at will.

Setting up of hardstatus

The setting up of the hardstatus is done by the lines

hardstatus off
hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{= .g} %H |%=%{K}%{= w}%?%{K}%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%{w}%n%{w}*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%{K}%+Lw%?%= %{g}|%{B} %1` %{g}|%{B} %m-%d  %{W}%c %{g} '

In a nutshell, the first line deactivates the default hardstatus, the second makes the hardstatus to be always at last line, and the third defines the form. There are multiple capabilities to use for the form of hardstatus, and this is beyond of the scope of this README. Please refer to the multiple resources online, for adapting the hardstatus form to your tasting.

Fixes of appearance

The screenrc file of this repository, has some minor fixes for the appearance of GNU Screen. To be honest, I haven't explicitly tried how these affect the appearance, but I keep using them. Feel free to experiment and keep them or remove them.

These fixes are at the lines

# Fix for residual editor text
altscreen on

# Fix for Name column in windowlist only show "bash"
windowlist string "%4n %h%=%f"

Declaration of color handling

If you want to use the 256 color terminal emulation of GNU Screen, then you have to declare it.

Note bold that in order to use the 256 colors, you have to have a GNU Screen that is built with 256 colors capabilities. If you do not know how to do this, you can check this blog post (is for macOS, but it stands true for Linux as well).

The line that declares the 256 color support is

term screen-256color

Activation and deactivation of hardstatus line

Finally, at the last lines of the screenrc file, there is a key mapping to activate and deactivate the appearance of the hardstatus line. These lines are

bind f eval "hardstatus ignore"
bind F eval "hardstatus alwayslastline"

and they indicate that when you use

ctrl-a f

you make the hardstatus line to disappear, and when you use

ctrl-a F

you make the hardstatus line to appear (notice the capital F).

Enjoy!