So I downloaded Ish, because I thought I saw somebody mention that they use it. I'm using a Bluetooth keyboard.
If I try typing, e.g. a basic 'ls -1", everything seems to be upper case, including the '-1' getting turned into '_!' I get no feedback whatsoever, e.g. no "command not found", and so on. So how do you use it? I apparently need the super basics, like I'm sitting with the phone and the keyboard, and I want to run it and type commands and get feedback and/or read the feedback on the screen. I did hide the on screen keyboard, although I'm honestly not sure if that worked, because using VO-up/down seems to go through the rows of the qwerty keyboard.
While I'm asking questions about this, I'll need to use an editor like Nano and gcc and the usual tools, I assume if they're not there already I can just install them and they'll work? Also that you can do the usual stuff like install a binary to /usr/local/bin and it will be found because it's in the standard path?
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Some answers
I mainly use Ish to play muds, but I'll try to answer your questions the best I can. I'm not sure why ish is messing with the letters and symbols as you type them with a Bluetooth keyboard. The only thing I can think of is the shift key being accidentally held down somehow. I've used a keyboard with it, but haven't had that problem.
Sometimes, VoiceOver will stop reading new lines as they come in. The best way to fix this is to quickly start and stop dictation. I'm not quite sure how or why that fixes it, but it seems to work for me.
I haven't tried using Nano, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. I bought Textastic before it went to a subscription model and use that to edit files. If nano doesn't work, I found another editor called Runestone that might work, although I didn't test it very much.
One thing I've noticed is that if you're playing muds or typing while text is coming in, the typed text mixes with the output.
I hope this helps
So in theory, I can just start typing?
I have a feeling caps lock might have gotten stuck on somehow, it seems kind of tough to get it to change in Ish. But anyway, assuming I figure that part out, do I have to do anything special like hide the on screen keyboard or something? Or if I open it and type ls on the external keyboard, it should give me back a directory listing? I mean I'm not seeing a prompt or anything, I get the message about welcome to Alpine, and the on screen keyboard below it.
Yes
Yes. Once you open the app you can start typing. You don't have to hide the on screen keyboard. When I need to review the output, I just use explore by touch above the keyboard. Once you find the output, you can swipe through some of it, but might need to scroll up and down if there's a lot of it.
Still nothing much.
It shows me a localhost prompt. If I type ls, it appears on the screen, at the top. But if I hit enter, nothing happens. I get no directory listing.
Of course, I'm kind of wondering if something's weird with the keyboard or the phone now, because I tried to come here in Firefox on the phone and post this. Single letter navigation wouldn't work, so I thought maybe it was because I also didn't have arrow quick nav on. Left and right together wouldn't toggle it.
However, I'm still voting for Ish being the issue, because I also turned off the BT keyboard and typed ls and return on it's on screen keyboard, and got the exact same result, no change in output.
Tried it a while ago
I tried ish back when it was first released. I thought I might use it to ssh into my Linux system. IIRC, I could never get ssh installed, and there were multiple accessibility issues. I hope you have better luck with it.
Working Great Here
Yes, you should be hearing the output of your commands immediately after pressing ENTER. Start by putting the VO cursor anywhere on the on-screen keyboard. Then type. It even works with Braille Screen Input, which is something special—I was managing my email in bulk over ssh from my hospital bed!
As to using curses-based apps, I advise against. Ish is a file provider so you can access the filesystem from other apps and you should do that. I can't recommend a good simple plaintext editor, because I haven't found one myself. But there's always ed/sed, if you need to edit on the CLI.
Yes, it's just an alpine x86 system. If you have binaries, you can load them up, again using the Files app if necessary.
Good luck with it.
We're getting somewhere.
Apparently ls did nothing because there's nothing in my home dir. If I hit ctrl-m, like literally, not the return key on the BT keyboard, I get output read to me.
I'm trying to run this to build a BBS client, because none of the terminal apps with telnet are actually accessible. So I'd need a real editor. On Mac I just have the client call TextEdit, but I don't think there's anything like TextEdit in iOS.