Re: Alt+function keys and other keys

[R. Steven Rainwater]

On Wed, 2010-03-10 at 22:37 +0100, Yury V. Zaytsev wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-03-10 at 09:55 -0600, R. Steven Rainwater wrote:
> > Maybe there needs to be a policy that key combination changes must be
> >  tested on mainline terminals before they are accepted in released
> >  versions of MC.
> 
> The issue here is that xterm is considered to be the reference, and in
> fact in what concerns the PgUp / PgDown problem, it's a Gnome terminal
> bug that VTE maintainers are unwilling to fix.

I agree the bug is in Gnome terminal but if we know it isn't going to be
fixed, then intentionally using that key combination seems like an
intentional choice to drop support for a high profile terminal. 

To me, it makes more sense to map the key combinations that work in the
majority of widely used terminals and then select among those the ones
to be used in MC. In other words, why not try to make MC work with the
maximum number of terminals instead of intentionally breaking
compatibility with some of them?

The key combos can be remapped by the end user, so it should be possible
to offer an MC that works out of the box for nearly everybody. Then, if
a particular user really wants to use a key mapping that works only in
his terminal and no others, he can manually change it without breaking
things for everyone else.

-Steve

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Re: Alt+function keys and other keys

[R. Steven Rainwater]

On Wed, 2010-03-10 at 09:35 +0100, Miguel Pérez wrote:
> Following the bug I reported
> ( http://www.midnight-commander.org/ticket/2064 ), I've been trying
> different terminal emulators and combinations and wasn't able to get
> these keys (mostly function keys with Alt, Ctrl-Alt, Ctrl-Shift,
> Alt-Shift, Ctrl-Alt-Shift, also Home/End/PgUp/PgDown disturbances) to
> work on Midnight Commander.

Thanks, I'm glad to see someone working on this. I use GNOME terminal on
Fedora and I first noticed the problem with F12, when the Ctrl-pgup and
Ctrl-pgdn stopped working (it turned out developers had switched that
functionality to some other key bindings that don't work on GNOME
terminal). The bug reports related to that incident are here:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=551062

http://www.midnight-commander.org/ticket/1938

It seems like a good idea to see which terminals are the most commonly
used and focus testing on those. My guess is the GNOME terminal and KDE
Konsole terminals are at the top of the list since nearly every modern
distro runs one of those two desktops. Maybe there needs to be a policy
that key combination changes must be tested on mainline terminals before
they are accepted in released versions of MC.

-Steve


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Re: Some keys are not properly recognized in Konsole/xterm

[R. Steven Rainwater]

On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 21:15 +0100, Yury V. Zaytsev wrote:
> Editor -> Options -> General
> 
> [ ] Visible trailing spaces
> [ ] Cursor beyond end of line 

Thanks! Also, "[ ] Visible tabs" turned off the distracting garbage
characters appearing inline with my text. I definitely think all three
of those should be off by default. But I'm glad to have found a way to
turn them off anyhow. That makes the editor much, much more usable! Now
if I could find a fix for the ctrl-pgup/ctrl-pgdn breakage, MC would be
back to its perfect self again! :)


-Steve

 


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Re: Some keys are not properly recognized in Konsole/xterm

[R. Steven Rainwater]

On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 20:08 +0100, Yury V. Zaytsev wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 10:56 -0600, R. Steven Rainwater wrote:
> > and the GNOME terminal developers are saying they won't change
> > the way the key bindings work because it would break lots of
> > other stuff. 
> 
> Are they saying anything at all?

The GNOME terminal developers have not responded to my emails about the
bug report (yet) but some googling revealed the escape sequence problem
came up before some years ago and they refused to change the behavior
for the reason that a lot of other programs now depended on the current
behavior. I don't have a reference handy though. 

The RedHat bug ID tracking the MC ctrl-pgup/ctrl-pgdn problem is:

 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=551062

The Redhat bug started as an MC bug and was then switched to a GNOME
terminal bug since that's technically where the problem is (even though
it was a change in MC which caused the loss of functionality)

The MC bug (which has been closed as a "won't fix"):

 http://www.midnight-commander.org/ticket/1938



> Actually, I have just tried Ctrl+PgUp / Ctrl+PgDown (which you can free
> from the settings dialog) and Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End on 4.7.0.1 in Gnome
> Terminal and neither of those takes me to the beginning / end of file.

Yes, neither work for me on RedHat Fedora 12. Prior to this version,
ctrl-pgdn took me to the bottom of the file and ctrl-pgup took me to the
top of the file. That functionality worked on all previous versions of
Fedora and on Fedora 12 when it was first released but broke with they
updated to MC 4.7.0.

> >(other nits that annoy me are the recent breakage of the cursor that
> > makes it float out past the real end of line and not wrap correctly,
> > and the earlier change that replaced white space with gibberish characters)
> 
> Both of these are optional and should be off by default. If this is not
> the case with the latest version, please submit a bug report.

In mc-4.7.0.1-1.fc12, which is standard with Fedora 12, both those
"features" are on by default and I have not seen any obvious way of
turning them off. I highly approve any changes that would make such
unusual behaviors not the default. In the meantime, how could I turn off
those behaviors?

-Steve


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Re: Some keys are not properly recognized in Konsole/xterm

[R. Steven Rainwater]

On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 10:23 +, frank wrote:
> > This does not really explain why the default key bindings were switched
> > from Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDown that I've been using unconsciously for
> > quite a long time at all.
> 
> Quite correct and quite oblivious of reality.
> 
> It must be at least 10 years that editors have standardised on 
> Ctrl-Home and Ctrl-End to move to begin resp. end of buffer.

To me, the bigger problem is not what keys are used but whether or or
not it works at all. And since the ctrl-home and ctrl-end key combos
don't work with MC in GNOME terminal, this change broke the
functionality. As best I can tell, the MC developers are blaming the
breakage on GNOME terminal and the GNOME terminal developers are saying
they won't change the way the key bindings work because it would break
lots of other stuff. 

Is there perhaps some way that these other editors you're mentioning
detect Konsole or GNOME terminal and adapt to their slightly out of
whack xterm escape sequences? Perhaps MC could be adapted to work
correctly with them too.

I've been an MC user for at least a decade but changes that have been
showing up in recent versions of the MC editor are making the program
more and more difficult to use productively. (other nits that annoy me
are the recent breakage of the cursor that makes it float out past the
real end of line and not wrap correctly, and the earlier change that
replaced white space with gibberish characters)

And, sorry, I don't really mean to give the idea I don't like MC,
because up until recently I've always been a huge proponent of MC and
installed it on every GNU/Linux system I've used as well as using it on
HPUX, AIX, Solaris, and other systems. It really is a great program and
I appreciate all the hard work that's gone into it. :)

-Steve

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Re: Some keys are not properly recognized in Konsole/xterm

[R. Steven Rainwater]

On Mon, 2010-02-01 at 06:41 -0500, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Feb 2010, Miguel Pérez wrote:
> > I'm using Konsole, set to the xterm (XFree 4.x.x) keyboard, and $TERM is
> > xterm. These are the key combinations that produce escape sequences but
> > aren't recognized by mc. Everything else either works, or doesn't produce a
> 
> konsole doesn't send escape sequences that match xterm.
> Use "infocmp konsole xterm" to see this.

I've noticed similar problems with GNOME terminal in recent versions of
MC included with Redhat Fedora. In particular the ctrl-pgup and
ctrl-pgdn functionality was recently moved to the ctrl-home and ctrl-end
key combos. These key combos don't work in GNOME terminal, so the
ability to get instantly to the top and bottom of the file in the MC
editor is now lost on GNOME-based GNU/Linux systems (unless the user
manually remaps the functionality back to a usable key combo). 

I'm assuming that in the past, important functionality was intentionally
limited to key combos that worked with major term programs like GNOME
terminal and Konsole but it seems as if usability on those systems is no
longer being tested (or perhaps no longer considered important)? 

Anyway, it would be nice to see MC work out of the box on GNOME terminal
and konsole again on future versions. I love MC but I use GNOME terminal
far more often than xterm.

-Steve


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[bug #23849] Tabs are replaced with dashes, making edit difficult to use

[R. Steven Rainwater]

URL:
  

 Summary: Tabs are replaced with dashes, making edit
difficult to use
 Project: GNU Midnight Commander
Submitted by: steevithak
Submitted on: Tuesday 07/15/2008 at 04:00
Category: Editor
Severity: 3 - Normal
  Status: None
 Privacy: Public
 Assigned to: None
 Open/Closed: Open
 Discussion Lock: Any
 Release: 4.6.2-pre1
Operating System: GNU/Linux

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Details:

When I hit F4 to edit a text file, Cooledit v3.11.5 loads but, unlike all
previous versions of MC, which I have used for many years, this version
obscures the text file by displaying strings of dashes, greater-than signs,
dots, and other gibberish in what should be whitespace within the document.
This makes the document difficult to read and it's incredibly annoying!

The editor should display what's actually in the file and not extra
characters that aren't really there! I now have to use another editor to
double check - is that dash really in the file or not?

MC already has a hex mode if I need to find out if a particular character is
a tab or space or whatever, so this doesn't add any new capabilities, it just
makes the editor hard to use.

I'm sure someone thought it was cool or useful for some obscure purpose but
it violates the WYSIWYG principle upon which the editor was previously based.
If someone really needs this "feature", please make it a configuration option
can be turned on in rare cases if someone wants it, so it doesn't make editing
annoying for the rest us! 

Example:

edit a text file containing this line of text:

"This is a test"

all previous versions of MC show actual text:

"This is a test"

new version of MC shows non-existent gibberish all around text, making it
difficult to read:

"<><>..<->This.<>is<---><><->a<>test<---><><>."






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