On Tue, 23 Mar 2010, Chet Ramey wrote:
And now they can. We moved beyond that even while discussing the previous
bug report. We're talking about whether or not xterm reveals anything to
the application running inside it about the current state of its
resources (it doesn't) and whether it dynamically reflects changes in those
resources to an application (it can't). Good enough.
of course, I _could_ have added another control sequence to elicit the
information. (I have todo's for several sequences, but don't see one for
that).
Given that, the issue is now how to appropriately set the default value of
the enable-meta variable. That's the current question, and it was the
question we were considering before.
Like the choice of $TERM, it's something that the user is going to have
to decide. It might be dynamic.
Another question is why xterm honors the smm sequence and allows the Meta
key to act as an eight-bit modifier when eightBitInput and
metaSendsEscape are false. Should xterm's behavior in response to terminfo
sequences always be consistent, or should it depend on the current
settings?
The control sequence was introduced fairly late in the alt-/meta-/eightbit
input logic. It's "always" honored; I seem to recall deciding that it was
more useful as "always" rather than special-casing it according to
eightBitInput's setting since eightBitInput is actually two parts - the
CS8/CS7 termio setting during initialization, as well as the input mapping
that corresponds to the meta function. The control sequence modifies the
second part...
The metaSendsEscape simply happens be part of a chunk preceding the
mapping, which decides if a character is eligible for mapping.
For instance, if altSendsEscape is set, then this is another way the
character is eligible.
man 5 terminfo
If the terminal has a ``meta key'' which acts as a shift key,
setting
the 8th bit of any character transmitted, this fact can be
indicated
with km. Otherwise, software will assume that the 8th bit is
parity
and it will usually be cleared. If strings exist to turn this
``meta
mode'' on and off, they can be given as smm and rmm.
I agree that terminfo is a poor mechanism to use when terminal capabilities
can change dynamically. Unfortunately, it's what we have.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU c...@case.edu http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/
--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net
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