Re: Down with smcup!

[Miles Bader]

Mellman Thomas <address@hidden> writes:
> Yes, it keeps your terminal tidy.  But when I want to do that, I open a
> new window.

This doesn't work if you're on a non-graphical terminal (anyway, I don't
like lots of windows).

> In order to do anything, I usually have to look something up first: in a
> manpage, in the /etc/resolv.conf file, anywhere and everywhere.  Then, I
> want to enter it.  Of course, I'll have to refer back to it.  nWith smcup,
> it's gone.

I agree, that's sometimes an annoying problem when smcup is used.

I find, actually, that I prefer _certain_ programs, like less/more, to
not use the smcup behavior, but others (like emacs) to use smcup.  I
suppose the difference is that less/more are something like a `filter'
on the output stream, but still `part' of the terminal session, whereas
emacs seems independent.

> I've gotten used to having private TERMINFO entries.

... which seems like a reasonable solution

> But with the last release (I guess then) of cygwin, simply cutting sm/rmcup
> out causes piles of error messages from curses, as if your terminal emulator
> were broken if it didn't support [sr]mcup.

Ah hah, this is apparently the bug that you're complaining about!

I don't know which curses implementation that cygwin uses (ncurses?);
however I don't think that this is the right mailing list for curses
bug reports.  Perhaps someone else know which one is.

In any case, if there are error messages involved, you should include
them in your bug reports.

-Miles
-- 
97% of everything is grunge