RE: mintty scroll to bottom

["Lemke, Michael SZ/HZA-ZSW" <lemkemch@schaeffler.com>]

On March 05, 2012 6:26 PM Ryan Johnson wrote:
>On 05/03/2012 5:05 AM, Lemke, Michael SZ/HZA-ZSW wrote:
>> On March 04, 2012 12:51 PM, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>> On Mar  2 20:20, Andy Koppe wrote:
>>>> On 2 March 2012 08:41, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>>>> On Mar  1 20:43, Andy Koppe wrote:
>>>>>> On 29 February 2012 12:46, Lemke, Michael  SZ/HZA-ZSW wrote:
>>>>>>> What is the mintty equivalent to rxvt/xterm's
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -si|+si
>>>>>>>               Turn on/off scroll-to-bottom on TTY output inhibit;
>>>>>>>               resource scrollTtyOutput has opposite effect.
>>>>>> There's no such option. Shift+End will get you back to the current
>>>>>> output after looking at something in the scrollback, as will any
>>>>>> keypress that sends something to the terminal.
>>>>> Any chance to implement this?  Automatic scroll-to-bottom is a useful
>>>>> feature, IMHO.
>>>> I disagree. The point of being able to scroll back to earlier output
>>>> is to read and perhaps copy something. When doing that, having the
>>>> scrollback jump back to the bottom without the user asking for it is
>>>> rather unhelpful. The Windows console does this, and I always found it
>>>> really frustrating.
>>> THat's why this is an option in xterm.  Every use has another idea how
>>> the terminal should behave in this regard, I guess.
>> I'd also appreciate very much implementing that option.  mintty is
>> promoted here as a replacement for rxvt but obviously lacks a functionality
>> I've come to depend on.  My use case is a terminal window in which I don't
>> do much but where a lot of background jobs regularly produce output.
>> A quick glance at the window tells me the current status of those jobs.
>> Not with mintty anymore.  Same with the classic use case tail -f logfile.
>What you describe above sounds more like mintty allowing a visible "end 
>of output" to scroll off the bottom without following it, a behavior 
>I've never observed and which would arguably be a bug.

That's not what I said.

>
>When I fire up something that produces copious output (gcc bootstrap, 
>compile emacs, etc.) mintty scrolls to track end-of-output unless I 
>purposefully scroll upward 

Right, same here.  Turning on scroll-to-bottom would change that.  It
scrolls to bottom immediately.

>(in which case I'd prefer it to stay put long 
>enough to read/copy the text rather than immediately jumping me back to 
>end-of-output). 

That depends on what I am doing in such a terminal.  I might have a
tail -f /var/log/messages & in that session on a system with low 
syslog activity.  I want to be notified immediately if there is 
output and don't mind being interrupted.

>Once the scrollbar is set back to bottom, it again 
>tracks end-of-output. 

Correct.  And that's the step I want to skip.  The si-option does
exactly that.

>
>Am I missing something? Or do your background jobs just produce output 
>really infrequently compared to 'make all'?

In this case yes, but I also like scroll-to-bottom if there's more output.

>The latter is the only way I 
>can see "reading stuff from the past" and "scroll-to-bottom" coexisting 
>peacefully 

They usually won't.  That’s why this should be an option and not the 
default.

Michael