Re: Apps creating new windows?

[Trent W. Buck]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 10:10:18PM -0400, Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote:
> Is there ANY implementation at all, for when an app is running under
> screen, for it to be able to launch a "new window" (for example, to
> view an attachment in pine, to start a /query in irc, to view a file
> in MC)...
>
> I'm not asking if this functionality exists in those programs, but
> if there's a simple way of implementing it (i.e. if the calls exist,
> etc).

There is: have your program run "screen foo" to start the app "foo" on
a new screen window.  Because $STY is set within screen, your
invocation "screen foo" creates a new window instead of a new session.

Unfortunately, this use case for screen is horribly broken if you want
to create the new window from within a script (e.g. an Emacs key
binding), because "screen foo" still checks if there is a controlling
terminal -- even though in this case it doesn't need one.  I get
around this by instead running "xterm -e screen foo", which causes a
second xterm to pop up for a second.  This is a really evil and
unpleasant kludge, and it makes me sad.

Further reading: http://bugs.debian.org/461107