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Problems with ae and xterm



Since ae has been converted to slang I have been having many problems with
the keybindings for ae.

When it was compiled against ncurses, the terminfo config files worked
fine with entries like:

.cursor_up     $(kcuu1)

Which the termcap equivalent should be:

.cursor_up     $(ku)

Except it doesn't work.

With this entry in the ae.rc file, pressing the up arrow produces ^[[A on
the screen. Replacing this with:

.cursor_up    ^[[A

causes the up arrow key to work (in both the console and an xterm)

The same problem occurs witht the function keys as well. Putting the
keycode into the ae.rc file allows them to work on the console, but they
don't work in an xterm.

This is where is gets even more bizzare. Checking the keybindings for the
function keys, the xterm defines F1 as ^[OP, but when I put that keycode
into the F1 entry, all I get when pressing F1 is the characters ^[OP get
echoed to the screen.

There are other problems in an xterm, like the fact that the screen is
black and the letters are white, with no cursor appearing on the screen. 

Outside of the function key problems, ae has never behaved this badly in
an xterm. Many of these difficulties appear to be involved with the slang
library. 

In addition the ^M problem also seems to be a slang problem. While there
is a bad declaration of nel in the terminfo files, changing this doesn't
seem to fix the problem (the current nel is defined to be ^M^J, which is
the DOS version of a <newline>). It appears that slang is making this
happen.

I have tried to contact the slang maintainer, Chris Fearnley, but have
recieved no reply. Anyone know where he is?

The hardest part of this package has been to try to deal with the problems
of an xterm, without compiling ae as an X compatible program (something
which it was not originally designed to do)

>From my point of view, this editor is the fallback editor for the
installation, and as such, was not expected to be used in an xterm.
However, there are several shops that wish to manage these machines
remotely from an xterm using ae, so the problem remains...what should be
done about this problem?

My biggest problem right now is that I can't see any way for a non-X-aware
program to control its own keybindings when run in an xterm. Can anyone
provide a functional approach to this problem?

Waiting is,

Dwarf
--
_-_-_-_-_-   Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide"  _-_-_-_-_-_-

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (850) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

_-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_-


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