Buffer Feature Suggestion

[chadack]

I think it would be enormously helpful for keeping track of important information if there was some way to permanently highlight text in the buffer.

For example: In the current arrangement when you put the cursor at a location and then hold down the left mouse button while you move through a line of text it becomes highlighted. But as soon as you do that operation again the original highlighted text stops being highlighted.

I would like to see the ability to highlight text and keep it highlighted. For example perhaps one could hold down both left and right mouse buttons together to make the text highlighting permanent.

Does anyone else think this would be useful?

[miked]

I think the ability to highlight multiple words or strings could be very useful sometimes!

If you had the ability to highlight or change the color of certain strings, would this help?

Is the highlighting a purely visual cue, or would copying text also grab the selected text?

[mekanik]

Originally Posted by chadack

Does anyone else think this would be useful?

Not really, seems like a memory hog waiting to happen (this would by my assumption anyways) as there would have to be something allocated to say that from charX to charZ, then highlight Y...Say for instance that you set the buffer to 32000 for all your sessions and you highlight 16000 lines in 5 tabs (5 * 16000, don't forget how many characters could be present or even blank space), seems like a potential memory hog IMHO...

/mekanik/

[chadack]

Michael, thanks for paying attention to my suggestion.

For the scenario I'm thinking of color is not important at all, and neither is the ability to copy the selected text [this should alleviate the potential memory hog issue (only the "first" selection would go to the "clipboard")].

All I want to do is [within already buffered text]: be able to "higlight" one area of text and then when I "highlight" another area, let the original highlighted text remain highlighted. You could call this "Remain Highlighted" mode, and have it as an option next to buffer size.

Here is a simple example of how I migh use it: I have a core router and an edge router on two seperate tabs. The T1 from the core to the edge is flapping. I want to find out: **1. How many times the T1 has flapped and **2. How long the latest flap was.

Currently I'll count the number of times I see down or up in the show log output. If I'm counting an I get interrupted, I'll have to go back and start counting again. To measure latest flap time, I'll just highlight the "down" line in the log and then find the "up" time and subtract. Again, if I get interrupted, I'll have to re-find the "up" line. So...if I had "Remain Highlighted" On...I would just highlight either all the "Up" or "Down" lines and them count them. If I get interrupted I can much more easily come back to what I was doing. Same holds for measuring the flap time. If I can higlight both the up and down lines in the log it makes it easier to figure the time of the flap both at the time I'm doing it, and if I need to come back to it later.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks

[miked]

Hi chadack,

I've updated the feature request in our database with the information you provided - thanks for the additional details.

I think the scenario you describe would be a perfect application for a scripting solution.

If you could run a script that searched for keywords "Up" and "Down", and perhaps other strings, then perform some action based on what it finds (such as keep total counts of up, down, etc.) would this be helpful to you?

[chadack]

Mike,

Thanks for adding my feature request to the database and then updating it - I hope it gets implemented.

As for scripting: A script like the one you suggested would probably be useful to me, yes. I would like to write my own, but I'm not sure where to start. I took a C class several years ago so I've been exposed to the basics. Do most people who use SecureCRT script in Perl?

Thanks,
Greg

[miked]

I'd guess the most common scripting language used by SecureCRT users is VBScript.

As for where to start, I'd recommend the SecureCRT Help / Contents tab / ActiveX Scripting / Creating Scripts chapter. It provides an overview of what's needed. In particular, you'll need an ActiveX Script engine. Since VBScript and JScript are commonly installed with Microsoft Internet Explorer, you probably already have these engines installed. Other ActiveX engines (such as for Perl and other languages) are available here:

http://www.activestate.com/

If you could show an example of some of the data, perhaps someone could write a short example showing:

1. How many times the T1 has flapped and
2. How long the latest flap was.

The number of flaps would be pretty simple. Determining how long the flap was might be pretty difficult programmatically, but the the first and last times of the flap could probably be shown without much trouble. It would probably require use of Crt.Screen.WaitForStrings and Crt.Screen.ReadString or Crt.Screen.Get2, all described in the SecureCRT Script Objects Reference.