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Date:      Tue, 22 Oct 1996 16:49:30 +0200 (MET DST)
From:      cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer)
To:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: xterm termcap definition
Message-ID:  <9610221449.AA25913@wavehh.hanse.de>

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>>>  Interesting.  SunOS 4.1.3's /usr/src/usr.etc/termcap/termcap.src has
>>> the alternate screen behavior; are you sure you weren't using a
>>> modified termcap?
>>
>>Interesting again.  I just checked, and they do have the entries,
>>although 'more' on a Sun doesn't seem to use them.

>Interestingly, "more" uses terminfo in SunOS.

An application cannot choose whether to use the alternate screen
or not. 

An application that uses the termcap library always uses the alternate
screen if present, this is done by the library and is not settable by
the application that uses it. Whether the alternate screen is present
or not is defined by the termcap entry for the terminal used.

Processes that don't use termcap don't use the alternate screen.


Back the the subject, what FreeBSD has to decide over:

- decide what will be the default, alternate screen or not.

- currently, more with default commandline switches is unuseable in
alternate screen modus because it exits (and therefore switches
screens) when EOF is hit first. Therefore, alternate screen users
can't see the last page of a document. more has to be fixed to exit on
somethign else. In question is: 
  - Exit when a forward-scrolling key is hit while at EOF
  - Exit only on keystrokes reseved for quit

- The option to quit on first EOF should IMHO not be removed. It will
be unuseable in alternate screen mode, but the alternative to make it
work in both modes requires:

  A special extension to the termcap library. This entry will allow an
  application to say "no, thanks, I don't want an alternate screen, no
  matter whether one is availiable". more in quit-on-first-EOF mode
  *must use* such a call. IMHO, such a modification should not be done
  and I don't see great problem. 

  This should, IMHO, not be done and users of alternate screens will not
  be able to use quit-on-first-eof. That's OK, IMHO.

What needs to be done is changing more's default to something else
that quit-on-first-eof.

For other commit requests see my former messages. I wrote down the
whole thing at least two times.

Martin
-- 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin Cracauer <cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de>  http://cracauer.cons.org



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