Heyo,
so scrolling in terminal is all good and well, especially since I realized most commands are quite similiar to those used in emacs.
However, I find it quite unnerving to not see the command line while scrolling and have the view always jump to the bottom when starting to type.
I don't quite know what program to attribute this problem to, but I guess it would be xterm?! If not, using bash and KDE here.
So 'man xterm' had a line
" +sk This option indicates that pressing a key while using the scrollbar should not cause the window to be repositioned."
in it, and I started 'xterm +sk' from terminal but apart from looking horrific and no longer accepting <shift-page-(u|d)> for scrolling and instead printing an "H", the new xterm also didn't do what that text had me think it would: view still jumped down when typing.

Okay, as you can see, I am thoroughly confused by now. Google didn't really help, as it seems "beginners guide to scrolling" has been beneath everyones dignity so far. Well, not mine it appears.
So if you could tell me where I can read up on this - comprehensively - or help me out with quick fixes I'd be delighted.

I am not sure I follow your question

Are you wanting the prompt to remain visible whilst scrolling?? If so the prompt would need to be in an alternate window / portion of the window. The reason it jumps back to the prompt when typing would be because most people would probably need to know what they are typing.

I could be wrong, but personally have not seen a terminal that has this capability. If you are not able to use the history feature in bash to get to the information you need to see in the terminal,
may I suggest you simply open a second terminal so you can keep the information you want to see available or if it is output from a command, you could always redirect it to a file so you could
review that to then be used later.

If I have misunderstood your requirement, please explain a little more

Well that would certainly be an option, but seems pretty inconvenient to me, especially since I might not always have separate windows or multiple displays.

The point is, I don't need to keep track of my input, but have large outputs that I need to scroll through while typing to the prompt - to use info from it etc.

So what I'd basically like is indeed to have some sort of a separation between the prompt and the rest of the "window", kind of like the buffer in emacs; I'll try and illustrate:

1) Coming from here:
# f
# g
# h
# i
# j
----
/bla@bla:/direc/foo/bar$ some-unfinished-command

2) Going here, without having either the prompt disappear scrolling up and neither have the view jump back to 1) when typing to the prompt.
# d
# e
# f
# g
# h
----
/bla@bla:/direc/foo/bar$ same-unfinished-command but some more typing here

Hope that helped to clarify.

Perhaps this might help you: input and output in separate terminal emulator windows:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...nd-output-area

Hi,

I use KDE and it is very easy to do that. In my konsole terminal there is Ctrl+( and Ctrl+) to split the screen vertically and horizontally respectively.

I can split the screen and then scroll wherever I want in the top screen, then I select the bottom screen and start typing there. The top screen remains fixed at the scrolled position. Screenshot:

Check out the shortcuts of your konsole.

First off, thank you. But I can't seem to make this work, the shortcuts simply do nothing.
However, this would not really solve my problem anyway as far as I understand, since the output to the command in one window would still appear in the same window, thus I'd have to continually switch frames which appears to me to be too much of a hassle.

That's more like it, but still dependant on a window-system, which I'd really like to avoid.

I can't imagine this could be that difficult ... I just don't know where to start either.

Concerning the konsole, I think you can configure the shortcuts in order to make it work. But, if this is inappropriate for you, then I will suggest a terminal multiplexer like tmux. Try to see if it is installed on your system. When you have it, you can run
Screenshot:

But you'll have to learn a few things in order to use it. It's not as straightforward. Check this out: http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_adv_termmux.php

For example, you use Ctrl+b and arrow keys to move between panes and in order to scroll up or down, you need to use Ctrl+b+[ and then the arrow keys or PgUp/PgDown.

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Hey, that appears to be quite a workable solution for now. Thanks a lot mate.