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UNIX Programs That Come in Handy
This is the rough-and-tumble world of UNIX, which preceded the Macintosh
by many years. Perhaps this will also help you to appreciate why the
Macintosh was so revolutionary when it was introduced. (You can just hear
the designers crowing, “We’ll call this a menu! Yeah, that’s the ticket!” The
only graphics that you’d see on your monitor were the comics and sticky
notes that you stuck to the bottom.)
At the bottom of the screen is a menu of common commands. Above the
menu is a large, empty space where you can enter text, much the same as in
the word processors that you already know and love. (For those of us that
remember the halcyon character-based days of DOS, think older versions of
Word and WordPerfect . . . or, if you’re a real computing dinosaur like I am,
consider the original WordStar.) Type some text in that area. Anything will
do . . . a letter to a friend, a grocery list, or your school homework.
When you’re finished entering your desired text, save the document with
the WriteOut command in the nano menu. Directly next to each command
in the nano menu is a keyboard sequence used to perform that command.
(Refer to the bottom of Figure 1-7.) The % character is shorthand for the
Control key on your keyboard. Thus, to save a file, press %+O. This flies in
the face of standard Mac keyboard conventions, where the letter O is tradi-
tionally used to mean Open.
After pressing the Control+O sequence, pico prompts you for a filename.
As with most UNIX files, you’re permitted to enter a simple filename here or
a full path to a file. For this example, save the file to your Documents folder,
naming it MyNanoDocument.
After you’ve completed and saved the document, pressing Control+X will
transport you away from Planet Nano and back to the command line.
Networking with the Terminal
Because UNIX isn’t a new phenomenon, it has many useful networking abili-
ties built into it. In fact, UNIX was instrumental in creating much of what we
now take for granted: e-mail, the Internet, and the World Wide Web. Thus,
you’ll be happy to know that you can communicate over networks with the
Terminal in practically any manner that you can dream of . . . and then some!
WWW and FTP
If you’ve used the Internet for any time, you’re probably familiar with the
various means to transport data over a network. From FTP (short for File
Transfer Protocol) and Telnet to e-mail and the web, UNIX can handle it all. In
fact, UNIX has a command for each of these functions (and many more that
have passed into historical obscurity). Rather than use each individual com-
mand to send and retrieve data with the Terminal, Apple has conveniently
provided a command that can handle them all: curl. The curl command is
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