Re: lynx-dev UTF-8 display questions (was: Superscripts)

[Klaus Weide]

On 13 Jun 2000, Sergei Pokrovsky wrote:

> >>>>> Klaus Weide writes:
>   Klaus> If the problem reappears as mysteriously as it has
>   Klaus> disappears, let us know. :)
> 
> It reappeared earlier than you probably expected.  Actually it's you
> who have brought that spawn of evil by advising to apply -nocolor
> (actually what I needed and what you probably meant was -nounderline).

I meant -nounderline instead of -nocolor in that message as you
guessed, but in another message (about SLANG_MBCS_HACK,
(<http://www.flora.org/lynx-dev/html/month062000/msg00172.html>)
I actually meant it when I wrote [*]:

| If yes - do you use the color support?  If yes, do the display
| problems go away if you force lynx not to use colors (lynx -nocolor)?

Now I remember I also had been seeing some display glitches of the
sort you describe, which would only appear when color was turned off.
But I tried to reproduce that now, both with released 2.8.3 and my
own current code, and utterly failed...

A possible reason is that earlier I was testing with ncurses, while
my current code is complied with slang (1.3.9, with a private fix
that should not be necessary for 1.4.1).

Anyway, this was the sort of thing where I found that simplifying
terminfo descriptions helped.  So if you are _still_ interested,
please try that at this point.  I have already tried to line out
the procedure elsewhere, but here is a concrete example that I used:

Below is an input file for 'tic', to generate an "xterm-debian-nlm"
terminal description from an original "xterm-debian".  Replace
"xterm-debian" with whatever is your usual $TERM for an xterm,
probably just "xterm".  You probably have to consult the man
page for 'tic' to figure out how to tell it where it should get
the input source (for the use=), and where to put the result.
And since you have (half-?) installed ncurses, you may have to
be careful to use the right 'tic' (if one doesn't work, try the
other...).

-----------  start xterm-debian-nlm.src  -------------
xterm-debian-nlm|xterm terminal emulator for Debian GNU/Linux without local 
motion,
        cursor_down@, cursor_left@,
#       cursor_right@,
        cursor_up@,
        parm_down_cursor@, parm_left_cursor@, parm_right_cursor@,
        parm_up_cursor@,
        row_address@,
        column_address@,
        use=xterm-debian,
-----------  end xterm-debian-nlm.src  -------------

Then start lynx as 'TERM=xterm-[blah-]nlm lynx -nocolor' within the
xterm -u8.

> Well, if I launch lynx with -nocolor,
> 
> xterm -u8 \
> -fn -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1 \
> -g x57 -e lynx -nocolor &
> 
> and open a page in UTF-8 or even in Latin-1, say
> 
> http://www.esperanto.mv.ru/KompLeks/Lat1/A.html#AKUTO
> 
> then moving through the links (press a few Up arrows, then a few
> Downs) creates strange phantom anchors at random spots, sometimes
> beyond the end of line, sometimes overwriting some innocent plain
> prose ...  And these phantoms are not washed away with ^R ... And the
> WHEREIS-line spawns are rising trough the screen ...

I have seen strange effects that appear similar, but usually a ^L
would make them go away.  If not, paging up and down, or loading
a different text, or switching to source and back, would.  Usually.
That line about WHEREIS-line spawns is very poetic, but not clear
enough to make me understand whether that's something I've ever seen...

> No such horror without -nocolor.

Well, so you don't really need a fix (I assume that you can just
use -color), but I am still curious whether the "simplified
terminfo" approach works for you.


[*] In case that seems contradictory - I suggested turning color off
to improve things, while I was already aware of problems _appearing_
when color is turned off: the problems where 'color off' helped where
of a different kind than the glitches caused by 'color off', more
severe, but only appeared with SLANG_MBCS_HACK in some $TERM types.


   Klaus


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