--- Begin Message ---
- To: Gertjan Halkes <debian@ghalkes.nl>, 885710-done@bugs.debian.org
- Subject: Re: Bug#885710: RFS: libt3key/0.2.7-1 ITP #885595
- From: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
- Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2018 04:10:50 +0100
- Message-id: <20180102031050.bo5k62rizzh4ad54@angband.pl>
- In-reply-to: <20171229133046.37ec7474@rocky.fritz.box>
- References: <20171229133046.37ec7474@rocky.fritz.box>
On Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 01:30:46PM +0100, Gertjan Halkes wrote:
> I am looking for a sponsor for my package "libt3key". This is one of
> the dependencies of the Tilde text editor (#692512).
>
> * Package name : libt3key
> Version : 0.2.7-1
> libt3key-bin - Utilities for working with libt3key terminal
> descriptions
> libt3key-dev - Development files for libt3key
> libt3key1 - Terminal key sequence database library
Uploaded, in NEW.
I wanted to write a library doing this very thing, for about two decades,
yet somehow never had the tuits to do so. Instead, I wrote ad-hoc hacks
every time I needed this, ranging from okayish:
https://github.com/kilobyte/kbtin/blob/master/user_tty.c#L681
to utter crock:
https://github.com/kilobyte/termrec/blob/master/play/player.c#L165
or
https://github.com/kilobyte/uniview/blob/master/getkey.h
https://github.com/kilobyte/uniview/blob/master/getkey.c
I agree with you that curses is poo -- and it always was. I migrated off
it as sshing between IRIX, Linux and Solaris boxes meant that you lost not
only colors but even spaces (resultingintextlookinglikethis). Even modern
versions, despite efforts of a competent maintainer, are doomed to lose for
two reasons:
* sticking to an ancient API that's centered around pre-vt100 terminals
* using termcap/terminfo
The last part needs stressing: both stopped being maintained by mid-1980s.
Did you perhaps hear of a new-fangled kernel/OS named "Linux", that was
quite a rage in the '90s, and perhaps might see some use to this day? It
turns out guys at Sun/Oracle did not, and even most recent versions of
Solaris still don't understand TERM=linux (vt might not see as much use
today, but some of us still care about it[1]).
Thus, thank you a lot for writing this!
However, the documentation is not only inadequate, but pretty much not
existant.
For example, the only major text is for definition format, and even that is
lacking. Like, what's "kx"? All I see is that it's something that's off on
TERM=linux and TERM=rxvt, a bit of poking around shows it's related to
keypad application mode, which makes it being off on linux and rxvt a bit
odd as these two terminals do it most sanely ("\e=" without a need to mess
with modes, some return values differing from vt100 and friends, etc). I
did not source-dive here on a purpose -- a typical user would turn away in
disgust if no documentation is provided.
The API seems to be not documented at all, other than some unclear comments
in .h files.
The other issue is that, in my opinion, you rely on the TERM variable way
too much. Its value tends to be useless (pretty much anything says it's
"xterm" -- for some horrors, you can look especially at terminals popular in
Windows lands), or outright missing/wrong (lxc-attach, serial consoles).
>From my experience, the only semi-reliable way to detect between major
terminal types is to print "\e[>c" and listen for response. (And while
we're here, http://angband.pl/software/tty/sizetty.c for when TIOCGWINSZ
returns 0,0).
Meow!
[1]. git shortlog v4.14 --author='Adam Borowski' shows my score as
18-out-of-27 kernel commits being to vt.c
--
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