title refreshing (xtt) and the 4.6.0 release
Pavel Roskin
proski at gnu.org
Fri Jan 24 07:39:10 UTC 2003
Hello!
> The patch using the Xlibs is 'clean' and efficient for refreshing the
> title on a _local_host_.
>
> Tested various combinations of Solaris 8, 9, Linux kernel 2.4.17 xfree86
> 4.1.0, 4.2.0, 4.2.1 with 6 or 7 different terminals, but have yet to
> reconfigure one or two solaris machines to test with the XSun xserver.
> All favorable results on a local machine.
I'm really surprised by the amount of interest to this topic and by the
amount of time spent on it. I even start thinking that maybe I shouldn't
have applied the patch for changing the title, because the time spent on
this issue could have been better spent on something else.
> - It can't really be done in less than 100 lines of code.
> (at one point I had 250 lines)
> As a non-critical function, to avoid bloating main.c,
> should it be moved out to something like xtt_restore.c ?
I'd rather remove 10 lines to set the title than add 250 lines to restore
the title.
> - For use on a local host, a delay in the request/read xtt
> of a few millisec using usleep() resolves any mis-reads
> of the output from "\033[21t" . But on a remote host,
> the delay can't be less than one second. Because most
> users are on a local host (correct me if I'm wrong),
> the default delay should be set for local. Then, for remote
> host sessions, the delay for the timeout could be adjusted
> on-the-fly (by editing $HOME/.mc/ini or even better,
> by a command line option like "mc -r").
Just imagine that you know nothing about mc and you are reading the help.
Would you understand what this is about? I can imagine that some users
would be confused and will blame unrelated problems on the "incorrect
delay". I can imagine users writing a wrapper around mc to set the
timeout correctly if they log in remotely. Yet the same users will close
mc together with the terminal without ever needing the saved title.
> On exit from mc, just print something generic like:
> "xterm: [shell]" or "username at hosname"
> to overwrite the hanging xterm_title.
It used to be "Thank you for using GNU Midnight Commander" in 4.5.55.
Too long for my taste.
I think that if you expect the audience of the patch (i.e. those who
really care about the title after they exit mc) to edit $HOME/.mc/ini
and/or give command line options when running mc remotely, then probably
the same users won't have any problem adding something like this to the
environment:
PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/#$HOME/~}\007"'
It's standard in Red Hat 8.0 and it sets the title after every command,
not just mc.
--
Regards,
Pavel Roskin
More information about the mc-devel
mailing list