I want to determine the select statement for a view.

I have found a view called ALL_VIEWS which looks promising for this purpose.
The view contains a column called TEXT which appears to have the information
I am looking for. However, when I perform the following select I cannot see
all of the field TEXT. It's truncated for some reason. I have used SET
LINESIZE to 32000 to no avail!

two questions

1) why is this field truncated?

2) how do I determine the select statement for a view without using the
management GUIs?

Thanks

J.