Re: [dev] [st] [PATCH 2/2] Keep end of lines in memory when resizing terminal

From: Britton Kerin <britton.kerin_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2017 14:23:12 -0800

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 2:00 PM, Laslo Hunhold <dev_AT_frign.de> wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Mar 2017 00:52:03 +0300
> Alexander Krotov <ilabdsf_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey Alexander,
>
>> As Laslo Hunhold suggests down the thread, this solution is likely to
>> be more complex.
>>
>> To implement it properly, you have to implement a whole VT inside
>> of stsb, because it has to pass mouse events down and keep track
>> of character attributes. ncurses programs will output all kinds
>> of "move cursor here" and "change color" control sequences, but you
>> can't just pass them again to st when you need to scroll around. You
>> have to take your virtual state of the screen and render it in your
>> own way, adapting it to current viewport. Well, you can delegate
>> rendering to ncurses, but state machine which tracks screen state
>> will just replicate terminal emulator functions.
>>
>> In the end, you will have a stripped down dvtm, with vt but without
>> multiplexing.
>
> this is a very good point! Even if this was approached with an external
> tool you probably just start implementing st again with all the bells
> and whistles, let alone the fact that you need a separate program to
> make st work as desired in a normal setup within a window manager.
>
>> After that, I can proceed with implementation of scrollback based
>> on ring buffer. If it makes code simpler (by removing line shuffling,
>> allocation and deallocation in tresize), it may be integrated into
>> st. If not, it will be just another patch.
>
> A scrollback based on a ring buffer sounds exciting; I'm really looking
> forward to see how much it adds in the end. After all, the wiki might
> still be an option, but I would really propose to integrate it if it
> turns out not to be too complex.

I'd love to see scrollback also. I've played around a tiny bit with dumping
everything that goes through st to a file and binding dwm key to run less
on it etc. but never got anything good enough that I use it, largely because
of the issue mentioned above. Admittedly I could have tried harder but my
suspicion is that the best place for scrollback actually is in the terminal
emulator.

Britton
Received on Tue Mar 28 2017 - 00:23:12 CEST