Re: less, exit but left content on screen

[bob@proulx.com (Bob Proulx)]

Hi Thomas!

Thomas Dickey wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> > Using the standard xterm the control-middle mouse button will display
> > many options of which one is "Show Alternate Screen".  It is possible
> > to flip back and forth (inconveniently) to see this manually switch to
> > the alternate screen buffer.
> 
> ...what would you regard as a convenient way to flip back/forth?

I was not trying to imply an xterm deficiency, sorry if it came off
that way, but rather acknowledging that this is not the type of action
that one would do often as a matter of normal high use.  If I did not
say it that way I was worried my explanation would be construed as a
suggestion that they should use the control-mouse all of the time as
an SOP instead of something like configuring titeInhibit to simply
disable it if they did not like the behavior.

I wanted to describe the control-mouse alternate screen switching
capability because it is useful to know about and can help people
understand what is happening at a better level of detail.  People who
have never heard of the alternate screen buffer often believe the
screen data is simply gone.  Being able to flip back and forth to it
shows where it is and that it is still available.  It provides a
better understanding of what is happening under the hood.

In my experience there are three types of people with regards to this
issue.  1) People who like the alternate screen buffer.  2) People who
don't like the alternate screen buffer.  3) People who sometimes like
it and sometimes don't like it.  :-) Therefore I think that for the
people who don't like the behavior that they should simply disable
it.  They are probably never going to like it.  But it is configurable
in the personal environment so just configure it.

I have seen this be a Major Transition Point for many people who have
moved from one environment to another over the years.  This may seem
like a very small point because literally it is a terminfo field or an
X resource or a command line option but I have seen engineers who did
not know that (and thought that the screen data was lost) list this
feature as a complete showstopper bug, something that *must* be fixed,
before moving from one system to another.  I agree such extremism over
trival points such as this sounds silly but so it has been at times.
In fact I will predict that it will again be so in the future.  People
don't change and this makes predictions such as this pretty safe bets.

Bob