Hi Axel,
* Axel Beckert [2015-08-27 10:53 +0200]:
> Carsten Hey wrote:
> > People that do not know what a hardstatus is, would just have tried
> > alwayslastline and succeeded, but a terminfo upstream knows such things.
>
> Yeah, so that bug affects exactly one very knowledgable person ...
this bug affected exactly two people that we are aware of. When I used
screen the first time I was pretty sure that I did not have such
a thing (even though I did not know what it was), but I tried
alwayslastline nevertheless.
Actually this bug started as mail to Thomas Dickey (the question he had
in order to test some screen-s terminfo foo was not answered previously),
but then I noticed that Debian does unexpected things that are not
documented in a way I would have expected it.
> ... while it adds a nice feature for all others?
I agree that this is a feature some user consider to be useful.
The behaviour is nevertheless different than that of every other
(non-debian based) distribution and people use the same configuration
file on different operating systems. But screen's default behaviour
is also different if you switch from xterm to urxvt or vice versa.
If the behaviour will not be changed, we should think about improving
documentation.
This feature is based on the misuse of some terminfo magic (a titlebar
is no hardline) due to a lack of a proper way to express that one can
change the titlebar. Documenting such a misuse of terminfo magic in
screen(1) does not seem to be the right approach.
There is an alternative hardstatus in /etc/screenrc. The comment above
the setting does not match the default behaviour in Debian (fixing this
would at least a tiny improvement):
# An alternative hardstatus to display a bar at the bottom listing the
# windownames and highlighting the current windowname in blue. (This is only
# enabled if there is no hardstatus setting for your terminal)
#
#hardstatus lastline "%-Lw%{= BW}%50>%n%f* %t%{-}%+Lw%<
> > README.Debian suggests that people ask how to disable this and that
> > even the former Maintainer does not know any useful answer that does
> > not involve becoming root
>
> c) Using "hardstatus alwayslastline" solves the issue perfectly and
> has no other use in xterm anyway.
Then README.Debian should be updated accordingly:
[imagine some diff magic here] (the first three lines are unchanged)
< Debian Modifications
< --------------------
< * added Debian package maintenance files
> Debian Modifications
> --------------------
> * added Debian package maintenance files
> * added system wide configuration file /etc/screenrc
[imagine some diff magic here] (the first four lines are unchanged)
< the /etc/screenrc or you can override it in your personal screenrc by
adding
< the following line:
<
< hardstatus alwaysmessage
[imagine some diff magic here]
> the /etc/screenrc or you can override it in your personal screenrc by
> adding
> the following line:
>
> hardstatus alwaysmessage
>
> If you prefer to use the terminals last line to display the hardstatus,
> or if you don't want the hardstatus to be displayed at all, use one of
> these lines instead:
>
> hardstatus alwayslastline
> hardstatus alwaysignore
>
> Those lines have to appear after all other lines that configure the
> hardstatus, if any.
And /etc/screenrc should mention /usr/share/doc/screen/README.Debian.gz:
[imagine some diff magic here]
< # Set the hardstatus prop on gui terms to set the titlebar/icon title
[imagine some diff magic here]
> # Set the hardstatus prop on gui terms to set the titlebar/icon title.
> # To override it in ~/.screenrc, see /usr/share/doc/screen/README.Debian.gz
> (Which reminds me of https://bugs.debian.org/400111, a request to add
> a status line by default.)
tscreen used (I don't like the colors, and such a thing should fit into
the color prompt design of the default interactive shell, i.e., bash):
hardstatus alwayslastline '[^^ac]: New window [^^an]: Next window [^^ad]:
Disconnect [^^aq]: Quit'
caption always "%?%{yk}%-Lw%?%{wb}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%?%{yk}%+Lw%?"
... and it explicitly binded q and ^Q to quit due to the hardstatus line
used.
Anyway, some people use caption and hardline, other use one of them, and
there is no way to avoid the need to edit all ~/.screenrc files on all
accounts (at least on machines they have no root permissions) for some
people.
I still think that extending the copyright screen to be able to install
a recommended .screenrc is the way to go, it just needs to be done (and
fixing such an old bug is all but urgent). If there would not be such
a copyright screen, then I wouldn't know a sensible solution for this.
> So this is not really a final "wontfix", but I'm not yet convinced
> that this line really causes harm.
With proper documentation this line would be fine (and I'd consider this
bug to be closed), if you consider that there is no way to make the
behaviour sane in all cases due to the terminfo hardstatus vs. titlebar
thing.
Regards,
Carsten
