First Pass at mintty documentation

First Pass at mintty documentation

[Lee D.Rothstein]

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Hi, I've taken a first pass at distilling my experience with
'mintty' and the [ahem] discussion, here, about it into a text
file (see attachment mintty.{h})

If there is an affinity to it, I would be happy to plug this all
into a valid man template.

For my votes on 'mintty':

* I love it the way it is.

* Favorite features:
  > Speed
  > Speed
  > Best conformance to my personal expectation of what various
    directional keys (<HOME>, <END>, <->>, <<->, etc.) should do!
    (However, still bummed that <CTRL>-<->> & <CTRL>-<<-> do not
    move, respectively forward and back a word on the command
    line!)
   
* Futures expectation: My number one goal would be for it to
  replace the Cygwin console for everything, although I
  understand there are great difficulties with that goal.
 
Because of the nature of various "discussion" elements in wading
through this stuff, I am referring to my documentation "project" as:
*Diuretics*!
***********

Thank you, very much, Mr. Andy Koppe.

Signed,

L. Dave Rothstein (Lee) ;-)



[-- Attachment #2: mintty.{h} --]
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MinTTY
******

* Purpose

  > MinTTY is a terminal emulator (virtual terminal) for Cygwin
    that is better- integrated than any other available terminal
    emulator into Windows.

* Features:

  > Xterm-compatible terminal emulation, including support for
    modifier keys and application mouse mode.

  > Native Windows user interface that tries to keep things
    simple.

    = Window frame
    = Scrollbar
    = Right-click menu (also reachable via menu key)
    = Options dialog, with font and color selectors
    = Copy & paste behaviour (copy-on-demand, <CTRL>-<INS>
      copies, <CTRL>-V copies, shift-left click extends)
    = Drag & drop
    = Options dialog

  > X windows compatibilities, also

    = Options dialog allows configure in an Xish way
    = MinTTY can be configured via .minttyrc

  > Drag & drop and copy & paste of text and files. (The latter
    are inserted as quoted filenames.)

  > Mousewheel events can be sent as arrow keys. (This allows
    mousewheel scrolling, e.g., in 'less'.)

  > Options are stored in a text file ('~/.minttyrc'). Ergo no
    registry entries are required.

  > Window transparency.

  > Small executable size (currently <120K).

  > Not a replacement for the Windows Command Prompt. While
    Windows console programs with simple text output should work
    fine, more complex output will likely not display correctly.

  > Unlike PuTTYcyg, MinTTY discards PuTTY's networking
    functions, which are already convered by Cygwin's OpenSSH and
    telnet packages. This results in simpler configuration, a
    leaner interface and small code size. MinTTY's most obvious
    difference to rxvt is its native Windows interface and
    configuration dialog.

* Files, Binaries, Help Sources

  > Updates and source code are available at:

     http://code.google.com/p/mintty.

  > MinTTY discussion group at:

    http://groups.google.com/group/mintty-discuss

* Credits/License

  MinTTY is copyright 2008-09 Andy Koppe.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty
  merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is
  licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
  version 3 or later.

  MinTTY is based on PuTTY version 0.60 by Simon Tatham and
  contributors, available from
  ftp://ftp.chiark.greenend.org.uk/users/sgtatham/putty-0.60. Big
  thanks to everyone involved. Thanks also to KDE's Oxygen team
  for the program icon.

* Environment

  > Should work on Windows 2000 and upwards, although so far it
    has been tested on XP and Vista (32b & 64b) only.

* Installation/Program Configuration

  > MinTTY requires Cygwin, so Windows needs to be able to find
    the Cygwin DLL (cygwin1.dll) when starting mintty.exe. There
    are several ways to ensure this:

    = Start it from within an existing Cygwin session.

    = Place mintty.exe alongside cygwin1.dll in the Cygwin /bin
      directory and start it from there.

    = Add the Cygwin bin directory (normally C:\cygwin\bin) to
      the Windows PATH variable, which can be found under
      'Environment Variables' on the 'Advanced' tab of the System
      Properties. This is a good idea anyway, as it makes all the
      Cygwin commands available from the Windows 'Command Prompt'
      and 'Run...' dialog.

    = Create a shortcut to mintty.exe with the working directory
      set to the Cygwin bin directory. The create_shortcut.js
      script will do this for you.

  > Windows Shortcuts

    = Can have arguments too, which have to be listed after the
      program location in the 'Target:' box of their properties.
      This can be very useful with MinTTY, for instance for
      creating icons for 'ssh' sessions or your favourite editor.

    = To invoke 'bash' within mintty as a login/interactive shell
      (e.g., as a Win shortcut):

      mintty bash -li

* CLI Options/Arguments

  > --version -- print version

  > --help -- print usage information.

  > --config -- By default, MinTTY will store its configuration
      into a file called .minttyrc in your Cygwin home ('~')
      directory. This can be overridden with the --config command
      line option.

  > Any other command line arguments are interpreted as the
    command to execute in the terminal session. If no command is
    given, MinTTY will look up the current users default shell in
    /etc/passwd. If that is not set, it will run /bin/sh.

  > 'mintty' runs synchronous to the shell it's invoked from.
    Therefore if running from a batch file (like 'cygwin.bat'):

    start mintty bash --login -i

    will allow the batch file that invokes 'mintty' to terminate
    while the invoking terminal session continues.

* Interactive configuration

  > Full screen mode/Sized screen mode available from Title Bar
    Right Icons

  > Options Menu Hierarchy:

    = Options menu is accessible through Title Bar, left icon,
      left click.

    = Or, is accessible from the keyboard: <ALT><SPACE>o
                                           <MENU>o
  > Options Hierarchy

      Window
        # Columns
        # Rows
        ... Size information is automatically input to these
        fields when a window is resized using the mouse cursor
        and the lower left corner of the terminal window. Also, a
        pop-up box above the left corner of the title bar list
        what the new sizing is ...
        Transparency
          Off
          Low
          Medium
          High
        Disable transparency when active
        Show scrollbar
        Close on <Alt><F4>
      Looks
        Colors
          Foreground
          Background
          Cursor
        Show bold text as bright
        Allow text blinking
        Cursor
          Block
          Line
          Underline
        Enable Cursor blinking
      Font
        Select [font name and size]
          ... Default font point size is 10; be sure to pick
          fixed pitch font ...
        Smoothing
          System Default
          Antialiased
          Non-Antialiased
          Clear Type
        Codepage
          ... all Windows/int'l choices ...
      Keys
        Key Codes
          Backspace
            ^H
            ^?
          Escape
            ^[
            ^\
        Control key on its own sends ^[
        Modifier key for scrolling
          Shift
          Ctrl
          Alt
      Mouse
        Right click action
          Show Menu
          Extend
            [Use the right click for extending the text
            selection, X style. <Shift><left-click>, Win
            standard, always extends.]
          Paste
        Copy on select
        Application mouse mode
          [The mouse pointer  changed according to application
          mouse mode and override key.]
          Default click target
            Application
            Window
          Modifier key for overriding default
            Shift
            Ctrl
            Alt
      Output
        Printer
          None
          ... Windows available printers ...
        Bell
          Action
            None
            System sound
            Flash window
          Taskbar indication
            Disabled
            Steady
            Blinking

  > Alternatively, the config file,  '~/.minttyrc' can be edited directly.

    = Here's an example '.minttyrc' file:

      Columns=140
      Rows=42
      Transparency=3
      OpaqueWhenFocused=1
      Scrollbar=1
      CloseOnAltF4=1
      BoldAsBright=1
      AllowBlinking=1
      CursorType=2
      CursorBlinks=1
      FontIsBold=0
      FontHeight=14
      FontCharset=0
      FontQuality=0
      BackspaceSendsDEL=0
      EscapeSendsFS=0
      AltSendsESC=0
      ScrollMod=1
      RightClickAction=0
      CopyOnSelect=1
      ClickTargetsApp=1
      ClickTargetMod=1
      BellType=1
      BellIndication=2
      Font=Consolas
      Codepage=ISO-8859-1:1998 (Latin-1, West Europe)
      Printer=
      ForegroundColour=0,255,255
      BackgroundColour=0,0,32
      CursorColour=255,0,0

* Invoking 'mintty'

  > MinTTY's current behaviour is the same as rxvt's and xterm's,
    and therefore it makes sense not to execute the profile when
    starting a new terminal from within an existing session using
    just 'rxvt &' or 'mintty &'.

  > To invoke 'bash' within mintty as a login/interactive shell
    (e.g., as a Win shortcut):

      mintty bash -li

  > 'mintty' runs synchronous to the shell it's invoked from.
     Therefore if running from a batch file (like 'cygwin.bat'):

       start mintty bash --login -i

     will allow the batch file that invokes 'mintty' to terminate
     while the invoking terminal session continues.

* Rodentology

  > Mousewheel events can be sent as arrow keys. (This allows
    mousewheel scrolling e.g. in less.)

    When on the alternate screen and not in application mouse mode,
    mousewheel-up/down sends arrow-up/down combined with the scroll
    modifier configured under Keys, so with the default Shift you
    get ^[[1;2A and ^[[1;2B. (Replace the 2 with 3 for Alt or 5 for
    Ctrl).

    @@ What "alternate screen"? @@

    The thinking behind that is that this replaces the terminal
    scrollback when on the alternate screen, and that plain
    arrows mean cursor movement rather than scrolling. And a word
    of warning: the feature doesn't work in Vista when the
    scrollbar is shown. Looks like the inactive scrollbar is
    swallowing the mousewheel events.

  > Activate mousewheel scrolling in 'less' with the following two
    lines in your .lesskey file. Don't forget to run 'lesskey' to
    compile it into less's internal format.

    \eO1;2A back-line
    \eO1;2B forw-line

    BTW, it's 'O' rather than '[' here, because 'less' switches
    into "application cursor key" mode. (Yep, the world of
    terminals is full of fascinating yet strangely pointless
    details like that.)

* Terminal definition for 'mintty' -- termcap/terminfo

  > There is none!

  > Options to be used in profile (?):

    TERM=cygwin
    TERM=xterm

  > This will tell you what you've got/possible:

    $ set | grep TERM

  > Comments

    The proper GNUIsh thing to do would be to set TERM to
    "mintty", but that would require 'termcap' and 'terminfo'
    entries. I guess that might be worth considering for a MinTTY
    package, although iirc KDE's Konsole and GNOME's terminal
    also just set it to "xterm", because like MinTTY they aim to
    be compatible with (the default config of) xterm. Would make
    life easier for everyone to settle on that as a standard.

* Interactive Use

  > Scrollback buffer.

    = Not currently an option.

    = Arbitrarily fixed it at 16 KB.

  > Copy & Paste

    = Middle-click paste is always available
    = Copy-on-select
    = Right-click extend select can be enabled on the Mouse page of
      the options.
    = File drag and drop pastes in a Win32 path.
    = Pasting of multiple lines into apps like 'vim' works properly.

  > Options

    = Available via

      + <SHIFT>-<RIGHT>-<CLICK> on screen of virtual terminal window
      + <RIGHT>-<CLICK> on Windows context menu key
      + Right-click on Title Bar

  > Keys

    = <F1> to <F4> send xterm-compatible VT220-style keycodes

    = <ALT>-<F4> closes mintty window, but can be disabled from
      Options menu

    = Characters can be entered via Windows
      <Alt>-<NUMPAD_decimal_number> codes

      + Extending on the standard Windows behavior, codepoints
        beyond 255 are supported and octal codes can be entered
        by typing zero as the first digit.

* Bugs / Confusions

  > Alternate Screen

    = Is there an alternate screen toggle in 'mintty' as there is
      in 'xterm'?

    = How do you invoke it?

  > <CTRL>-<LEFT-ARROW>/CTRL>-<RIGHT_ARROW> does not appear to
    work to move back forward one word on command line. How do
    you fix this?


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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation

[Andy Koppe]

Lee D.Rothstein wrote:

> Hi, I've taken a first pass at distilling my experience with
> 'mintty' and the [ahem] discussion, here, about it into a text
> file (see attachment mintty.{h})

Thanks, that's a nice surprise!


> Speed

It's quite funny, I didn't realise that until people here pointed it 
out, probably because I didn't have to do anything to achieve it. :)


>  > Best conformance to my personal expectation of what various
>    directional keys (<HOME>, <END>, <->>, <<->, etc.) should do!
>    (However, still bummed that <CTRL>-<->> & <CTRL>-<<-> do not
>    move, respectively forward and back a word on the command
>    line!)

These two lines in .inputrc should do the trick:

"\e[1;5D": backward-word
"\e[1;5C": forward-word

And here's my favourite bash feature, mapped to Ctrl-Up/Down:

"\e[1;5A": history-search-backward
"\e[1;5B": history-search-forward


>   * Futures expectation: My number one goal would be for it to
>  replace the Cygwin console for everything, although I
>  understand there are great difficulties with that goal.

Hmm, yep, unfortunately the only path I can see towards that goal is to 
take Console2's approach of capturing a Windows console, and to try and 
make the cygwin terminal running inside it more standards-compliant, but 
that would still leave the slowness of the console and the lag caused by 
  capturing its contents.

Perhaps it would be possible to override and reimplement the Win32 
console functions as listed at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682073(VS.85).aspx ?
Do DOS software interrupts still work too? It would certainly be a huge 
amount of work though, which would include having to reimplement the 
console's ANSI emulation.


> Because of the nature of various "discussion" elements in wading
> through this stuff, I am referring to my documentation "project" as:
> *Diuretics*!

*grin*


> @@ What "alternate screen"? @@

Good question. It's vt100 lingo for a second logical screen that 
wholescreen apps such as editors normally use, often through the 
(n)curses library. (I'm taking "wholescreen" to mean an app controlling 
the whole terminal screen, as opposed to the terminal window being in 
fullscreen mode.)

>     = Is there an alternate screen toggle in 'mintty' as there is
>       in 'xterm'?

I didn't know xterm actually had a UI for this. Do people find this useful?


>     = How do you invoke it?

You shouldn't need to really. Apps such as 'less' or 'vi' switch to it 
using the releavant vt100 incantation.


 > [about mousewheel scrolling in less]
 > the feature doesn't work in Vista when the
 > scrollbar is shown. Looks like the inactive scrollbar is
 > swallowing the mousewheel events.

Actually this seems to be an issue with the trackpad driver on my 
laptop. It's works fine with a bog-standard USB mouse on my desktop.

Thanks again,
Andy

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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation

[Matt Wozniski]

On 1/11/09, Andy Koppe wrote:
> Lee D.Rothstein wrote:
> >    = Is there an alternate screen toggle in 'mintty' as there is
> >      in 'xterm'?
> >
>
>  I didn't know xterm actually had a UI for this. Do people find this useful?

If we're talking about switching between the regular screen and the
altscreen with a menu, I don't find that terribly useful...  If I
misunderstood and we're talking about having the ability to disable
the altscreen from ever being used, that's definitely more useful to
more people.  xterm can do both, though, so I'm not 100% sure which
we're talking about.

~Matt

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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation

[Christopher Faylor]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:18:32PM +0000, Andy Koppe wrote:
>> @@ What "alternate screen"? @@
>
> Good question. It's vt100 lingo for a second logical screen that 
> wholescreen apps such as editors normally use, often through the (n)curses 
> library. (I'm taking "wholescreen" to mean an app controlling the whole 
> terminal screen, as opposed to the terminal window being in fullscreen 
> mode.)
>
>>     = Is there an alternate screen toggle in 'mintty' as there is
>>       in 'xterm'?
>
> I didn't know xterm actually had a UI for this. Do people find this useful?

The only time I've found it useful is when I find myself inadvertently in the
alternate screen and want to see the other one or vice-versa.  That happens
to me maybe once a year.  YMMV.

>>     = How do you invoke it?
>
>You shouldn't need to really.  Apps such as 'less' or 'vi' switch to it
>using the releavant vt100 incantation.

FWIW, the Cygwin console mode implements this too thanks, IIRC, to Corinna.

cgf

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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.

[Lee D. Rothstein]

Andy Koppe wrote:

 > Lee D.Rothstein wrote:

 >> Hi, I've taken a first pass at distilling my experience with
 >> 'mintty' and the [ahem] discussion, here, about it into a text
 >> file (see attachment mintty.{h})

 > Thanks, that's a nice surprise!

Okay, since you at least didn't hate it, I'll plug it into a 'man'
template. I'll add additional stuff, as it becomes clear (such as
the '.inputrc' stuff, here).

 >> Speed

 > It's quite funny, I didn't realise that until people here
 > pointed it out, probably because I didn't have to do anything to
 > achieve it. :)

Actually, it's surprising that I could notice it, at all. My new
computer is a Gateway, running Vista 64b, and it's much (>>>>)
faster than the old one (less than a year old) that got zapped by
lightning static (an HP [slow disk!!!], running Vista 32b, Intel
Dual Core and 2/3 the RAM). Xterm was pretty much intolerably
slow with the HP, but is quite peppy on the GW (AMD Quad Core).

(The other nice things about Vista 64b are a practically
unlimited command line, and much longer tolerated path names,
ANAICT [as near as I can tell].)

Actually, the only thing wrong with MinTTY, ANAICT, is the name.
I would have preferred: CFFTTW (Cygwin's Fast F-ing Terminal That
Works! ;-) CFFT, for short? The name would be in the tradition,
for example, of MIT's node for documentation --
ftp://RTFM.mit.edu !)

 >>  > Best conformance to my personal expectation of what various
 >>    directional keys (<HOME>, <END>, <->>, <<->, etc.) should do!
 >>    (However, still bummed that <CTRL>-<->> & <CTRL>-<<-> do not
 >>    move, respectively forward and back a word on the command
 >>    line!)

 > These two lines in .inputrc should do the trick:

 > "\e[1;5D": backward-word
 > "\e[1;5C": forward-word

Thank you!

 > And here's my favourite bash feature, mapped to Ctrl-Up/Down:
 >
 > "\e[1;5A": history-search-backward
 > "\e[1;5B": history-search-forward

Perhaps I don't understand this 'bash' feature, but it doesn't
seem to work for me.

 >>   * Futures expectation: My number one goal would be for it to
 >>     replace the Cygwin console for everything, although I
 >>     understand there are great difficulties with that goal.

 > Hmm, yep, unfortunately the only path I can see towards that
 > goal is to take Console2's approach of capturing a Windows
 > console, and to try and make the cygwin terminal running inside
 > it more standards-compliant, but that would still leave the
 > slowness of the console and the lag caused by  capturing its
 > contents.

 > Perhaps it would be possible to override and reimplement
 > the Win32 console functions as listed at
 > http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682073(VS.85).aspx ?
 > Do DOS software interrupts still work too? It would certainly
 > be a huge amount of work though, which would include having to
 > reimplement the console's ANSI emulation.

I do lots of bash scripting including Windows/DOS commands, and I
can think of only one character cell app that ever gave me any
trouble from rxvt or xterm (whatever that app is -- I think a
Resource Kit app), I found a work-around and never needed it
again.

Isn't ANSI implementation required of virtual terminals? I know
that later DEC VTs, and HP terminals (bless their expensive
little scroll-back buffer hearts) had an "ANSI" mode. Does Curses
make this issue go away?

 >> Because of the nature of various "discussion" elements in wading
 >> through this stuff, I am referring to my documentation "project" as:
 >> *Diuretics*!

 > *grin*

BTW, that's why the "signature" was: "L Dave Rothstein" (as in "L Ron
Hubbard" -- Dianetics! ;-)).

 >> @@ What "alternate screen"? @@

 > Good question. It's vt100 lingo for a second logical screen
 > that wholescreen apps such as editors normally use, often through
 > the (n)curses library. (I'm taking "wholescreen" to mean an app
 > controlling the whole terminal screen, as opposed to the terminal
 > window being in fullscreen mode.)

 >>     = Is there an alternate screen toggle in 'mintty' as there is
 >>       in 'xterm'?

 > I didn't know xterm actually had a UI for this. Do people find
 > this useful?

I've used it on occasion when I needed to scroll back through two
debugging runs of a text-mode (character cell) app (or debugging
statements).

What would be better for this and other problems, however, is a
feature that I would love: The ability to interactively, on the
fly change, the Title Bar/Task Bar Title to be clear on what each
Window is doing. (I already know how to change the title from the
command line, e.g.:

  echo -ne "\033]2;*** $* ***\007"

but that doesn't fill the need with an omnibus app/tool like
virtual terminal.)

The older I get the more I need this. I could actually use this
on every Windows app, and perhaps on real life objects and
conversations, as well! ;-)

 >>     = How do you invoke it?

 > You shouldn't need to really. Apps such as 'less' or 'vi'
 > switch to it using the releavant vt100 incantation.

Okay, I'll fix that.

 > > [about mousewheel scrolling in less]
 > > the feature doesn't work in Vista when the
 > > scrollbar is shown. Looks like the inactive scrollbar is
 > > swallowing the mousewheel events.

 > Actually this seems to be an issue with the trackpad driver on
 > my laptop. It's works fine with a bog-standard USB mouse on my
 > desktop.

Yeah, I forgot to fix that. It works fine on my box.

 > Thanks again,
 > Andy

You are definitely welcome.

Lee


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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.

[Andy Koppe]

Lee D. Rothstein wrote:

>  > "\e[1;5A": history-search-backward
>  > "\e[1;5B": history-search-forward
> 
> Perhaps I don't understand this 'bash' feature, but it doesn't
> seem to work for me.

Start typing a command, press Ctrl-Up, and it finds the previous line in 
the history that started like that.

> I do lots of bash scripting including Windows/DOS commands, and I
> can think of only one character cell app that ever gave me any
> trouble from rxvt or xterm (whatever that app is -- I think a
> Resource Kit app), I found a work-around and never needed it
> again.

'net' is a troublesome command that's been mentioned, although it seems 
to be ok for basic stuff. But I guess there might be still be a few DOS 
fullscreen apps around. Turbo Pascal perhaps? But yeah, I'd sooner 
implement tabs than worry about DOS apps. ;)

> Isn't ANSI implementation required of virtual terminals? I know
> that later DEC VTs, and HP terminals (bless their expensive
> little scroll-back buffer hearts) had an "ANSI" mode.

To be honest, I didn't really know what I was talking about there. 
Wouldn't surprise me though if MS had done their usual embrace&extend 
trick on the ANSI stuff.

>  > I didn't know xterm actually had a UI for this. Do people find
>  > this useful?
> 
> I've used it on occasion when I needed to scroll back through two
> debugging runs of a text-mode (character cell) app (or debugging
> statements).

So your debug print macro or whatever would be switching screens?

> What would be better for this and other problems, however, is a
> feature that I would love: The ability to interactively, on the
> fly change, the Title Bar/Task Bar Title to be clear on what each
> Window is doing.

Can you explain the "interactive" bit a bit more. Do you mean clicking 
on the window title and start typing away at it?

Andy

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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.

[Andy Koppe]

Andy Koppe wrote:
> Lee D. Rothstein wrote:
>> I do lots of bash scripting including Windows/DOS commands, and I
>> can think of only one character cell app that ever gave me any
>> trouble from rxvt or xterm (whatever that app is -- I think a
>> Resource Kit app), I found a work-around and never needed it
>> again.
> 
> 'net' is a troublesome command that's been mentioned, although it seems
> to be ok for basic stuff. But I guess there might be still be a few DOS
> fullscreen apps around. Turbo Pascal perhaps? But yeah, I'd sooner
> implement tabs than worry about DOS apps. ;)

"full screen" or "DOS" is a red herring. Any program that does something
like the following, if compiled as a native program, won't work in rxvt
(or MinTTY, or cygwin/cmd-shell-with-CYGWIN=tty):

#include <stdio.h>
main() {
  int c;
  while ((c = getc(stdin)) != EOF) fputc(c, stdout);
}

The thing is, THIS program works as part of a pipeline even when
compiled as a native program -- but it breaks if you try to use it
interactively within rxvt/MinTTY/etc.  A cygwin-compiled version works
in all cases.

--
Chuck


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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.

[Andrew DeFaria]

Andy Koppe wrote:
> Lee D. Rothstein wrote:
>
>>  > "\e[1;5A": history-search-backward
>>  > "\e[1;5B": history-search-forward
>>
>> Perhaps I don't understand this 'bash' feature, but it doesn't seem 
>> to work for me.
> Start typing a command, press Ctrl-Up, and it finds the previous line 
> in the history that started like that.
Why not simply type Ctrl-R then the first few letters of a command (or 
some letters in the middle of a command). Works great! Requires no 
support from any terminal emulator...
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
Old age is when you still have something on the ball but you are just 
too tired to bounce it.


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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.

[Mark J. Reed]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 10:18 PM, Andrew DeFaria wrote:
> Why not simply type Ctrl-R then the first few letters of a command (or some
> letters in the middle of a command). Works great! Requires no support from
> any terminal emulator...

True, but that's only one direction of history search, albeit the most
commonly useful one.  For those cases where you're somewhere back in
your history and need to search forward, what do you do?  The default
binding for history-search-forward is control-S; unfortunately, that's
also usually the stop character and therefore caught by the terminal
before bash ever sees it.  So you have to either change the stop
character or rebind the function, and if you rebind that one you might
as well bind the other one to something symmetric.

Also, while it's fun to customize things in .inputrc (I have mine set
to editing-mode vi, in which incidentally the / key starts a history
search), I do recommend that everyone learn the emacs keys just
because that's what bash defaults to.  Sure, if I'm going to be typing
more than a couple commands in a foreign bash setup, the first one I
type is "set -o vi".   But for short sessions in someone else's
environment it's handy to be able to use the default bindings.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>

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keycodes (was: Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.)

[Andy Koppe]

Andrew DeFaria wrote:
>>>  > "\e[1;5A": history-search-backward
>>>  > "\e[1;5B": history-search-forward
>>>
>>> Perhaps I don't understand this 'bash' feature, but it doesn't seem 
>>> to work for me.
>> Start typing a command, press Ctrl-Up, and it finds the previous line 
>> in the history that started like that.
> Why not simply type Ctrl-R then the first few letters of a command (or 
> some letters in the middle of a command). Works great! Requires no 
> support from any terminal emulator...

Yes, obviously you can bind the history search to any key you like.

To do the same as above with rxvt:

   "\eOa": history-search-backward
   "\eOb": history-search-forward

Speaking of history, does anyone know why xterm and rxvt diverged so 
much on modifier keycodes and why the xterm codes ended up being six 
characters long?

Andy

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console vs pty (was: Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.)

[Andy Koppe]

Chuck Wilson wrote:
> "full screen" or "DOS" is a red herring. Any program that does something
> like the following, if compiled as a native program, won't work in rxvt
> (or MinTTY, or cygwin/cmd-shell-with-CYGWIN=tty):
> 
> #include <stdio.h>
> main() {
>   int c;
>   while ((c = getc(stdin)) != EOF) fputc(c, stdout);
> }
> 
> The thing is, THIS program works as part of a pipeline even when
> compiled as a native program -- but it breaks if you try to use it
> interactively within rxvt/MinTTY/etc.  A cygwin-compiled version works
> in all cases.

I see, thanks for explaining that. What exactly does happen when calling 
read() that means that pty input doesn't reach the program?

Andy

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Re: console vs pty (was: Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.)

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 05:44:09AM +0000, Andy Koppe wrote:
>Chuck Wilson wrote:
>>"full screen" or "DOS" is a red herring.  Any program that does
>>something like the following, if compiled as a native program, won't
>>work in rxvt (or MinTTY, or cygwin/cmd-shell-with-CYGWIN=tty):
>>
>> #include <stdio.h>
>> main() {
>>   int c;
>>   while ((c = getc(stdin)) != EOF) fputc(c, stdout);
>> }
>>
>>The thing is, THIS program works as part of a pipeline even when
>>compiled as a native program -- but it breaks if you try to use it
>>interactively within rxvt/MinTTY/etc.  A cygwin-compiled version works
>>in all cases.
>
>I see, thanks for explaining that.  What exactly does happen when
>calling read() that means that pty input doesn't reach the program?

It's buffered differently.  MSVCRT thinks that Cygwin's ptys are pipes so
it buffers the input like a pipe rather than a terminal.

cgf

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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.

[Andrew DeFaria]

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> True, but that's only one direction of history search, albeit the most 
> commonly useful one. For those cases where you're somewhere back in 
> your history and need to search forward, what do you do? 
In my 25 years of working on such systems I can probably count on 2 
fingers the number of times such a situation has arose and what I did 
was Control-C then Control-R again.
> The default binding for history-search-forward is control-S; 
> unfortunately, that's also usually the stop character and therefore 
> caught by the terminal before bash ever sees it. So you have to either 
> change the stop character or rebind the function, and if you rebind 
> that one you might as well bind the other one to something symmetric.
Again, if the need were more than 2 times in 25 years I'd probably just 
bind Control-E to it or something like that.
> Also, while it's fun to customize things in .inputrc (I have mine set 
> to editing-mode vi, in which incidentally the / key starts a history 
> search), I do recommend that everyone learn the emacs keys just 
> because that's what bash defaults to. Sure, if I'm going to be typing 
> more than a couple commands in a foreign bash setup, the first one I 
> type is "set -o vi". But for short sessions in someone else's 
> environment it's handy to be able to use the default bindings.
Hmmm... My usual inclination is to type "set -o emacs" when required! ;-)

Different strokes...
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
What do you do when you see an endangered animal that eats only 
endangered plants?


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Re: keycodes

[Andrew DeFaria]

Andy Koppe wrote:
> Andrew DeFaria wrote:
>>>>  > "\e[1;5A": history-search-backward
>>>>  > "\e[1;5B": history-search-forward
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps I don't understand this 'bash' feature, but it doesn't seem 
>>>> to work for me.
>>> Start typing a command, press Ctrl-Up, and it finds the previous 
>>> line in the history that started like that.
>> Why not simply type Ctrl-R then the first few letters of a command 
>> (or some letters in the middle of a command). Works great! Requires 
>> no support from any terminal emulator...
> Yes, obviously you can bind the history search to any key you like.
The points were, since you seemed to have missed them, that 1) that's 
the default binding for bash and 2) it doesn't require MinTTY, nor 
xterm, nor any particular terminal emulator. IOW it works out of the 
box, in fact works in Cygwin's bash Windows console window and does not 
even restrict you to locating only the start of a command. All win, win, 
win situations as I see it.
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
It's not hard to meet expenses, they're everywhere.


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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.

[Mark J. Reed]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 1:02 AM, Andrew DeFaria wrote:
> In my 25 years of working on such systems I can probably count on 2 fingers
> the number of times such a situation has arose and what I did was Control-C
> then Control-R again.

Sure.  I'm not disagreeing; I was more looking for a plausible
explanation than claiming necessity.

But if you're going to claim 25 years, you're going back to the first
version of ksh, which has some differences in history functionality
that might affect the percentages here. :)

-- 
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>

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Re: keycodes (was: Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.)

[Matt Wozniski]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 12:24 AM, Andy Koppe wrote:
> Speaking of history, does anyone know why xterm and rxvt diverged so much on
> modifier keycodes and why the xterm codes ended up being six characters
> long?

Because rxvt failed to adhere to the relevant standards[1].

[1] http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-048.htm

~Matt

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Re: keycodes

[Matt Wozniski]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 1:05 AM, Andrew DeFaria wrote:
> Andy Koppe wrote:
>> Andrew DeFaria wrote:
>>>>>  > "\e[1;5A": history-search-backward
>>>>>  > "\e[1;5B": history-search-forward
>>>>>
>>>>> Perhaps I don't understand this 'bash' feature, but it doesn't seem to
>>>>> work for me.
>>>>
>>>> Start typing a command, press Ctrl-Up, and it finds the previous line in
>>>> the history that started like that.
>>>
>>> Why not simply type Ctrl-R then the first few letters of a command (or
>>> some letters in the middle of a command). Works great! Requires no support
>>> from any terminal emulator...
>>
>> Yes, obviously you can bind the history search to any key you like.
>
> The points were, since you seemed to have missed them, that 1) that's the
> default binding for bash

It's a default binding for bash that does something different than the
suggested binding.  It's great that you can do both, but they're not
the same.  I know of both, use both, and find history-search-backward
and history-search-forward much more useful more of the time than
reverse-search-history and forward-search-history.

> and 2) it doesn't require MinTTY, nor xterm, nor
> any particular terminal emulator. IOW it works out of the box, in fact works
> in Cygwin's bash Windows console window

It works with all terminal emulators that are set up to send CTRL+R as
the single byte 0x12 - nearly all do by default, but there's no reason
they have to.  xterm can be configured to send CSI 27;5;114 ~
instead.  Andy's suggestion works with all terminal emulators that
send CSI 1;5 A for CTRL+UP - again, most do, but not all.  There's no
difference between the two here, apart from one binding being default
and the other being added with .inputrc.

> and does not even restrict you to
> locating only the start of a command. All win, win, win situations as I see
> it.

The fact that it's "restricted" to only working at the start of the
line is why it's more useful more of the time for me.  I sometimes
want to find a command that contained 'foobar' as one of its arguments
somewhere on the line - but, much more often, I want to find that
cryptic ctags invocation, or that find command, etc.  If I know what
the line begins with, then searching with CTRL+R just gives me false
positives that I need to skip over.

~Matt

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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.

[Lee D. Rothstein]

Andy Koppe wrote:
> Lee D. Rothstein wrote:
>
>>  > "\e[1;5A": history-search-backward
>>  > "\e[1;5B": history-search-forward
>>
>> Perhaps I don't understand this 'bash' feature, but it doesn't
>> seem to work for me.
>
> Start typing a command, press Ctrl-Up, and it finds the previous line 
> in the history that started like that.
>
I'll work on that habit. Thanks.

>> I do lots of bash scripting including Windows/DOS commands, and I
>> can think of only one character cell app that ever gave me any
>> trouble from rxvt or xterm (whatever that app is -- I think a
>> Resource Kit app), I found a work-around and never needed it
>> again.
>
> 'net' is a troublesome command that's been mentioned, although it 
> seems to be ok for basic stuff. But I guess there might be still be a 
> few DOS fullscreen apps around. Turbo Pascal perhaps? But yeah, I'd 
> sooner implement tabs than worry about DOS apps. ;)
>
rudimentary 'net' works.


>>  > I didn't know xterm actually had a UI for this. Do people find
>>  > this useful?
>>
>> I've used it on occasion when I needed to scroll back through two
>> debugging runs of a text-mode (character cell) app (or debugging
>> statements).
>
> So your debug print macro or whatever would be switching screens?
>

No. Me at the terminal switches screens, using the options menu, before 
the second run.
 

>> What would be better for this and other problems, however, is a
>> feature that I would love: The ability to interactively, on the
>> fly change, the Title Bar/Task Bar Title to be clear on what each
>> Window is doing.
>
> Can you explain the "interactive" bit a bit more. Do you mean clicking 
> on the window title and start typing away at it?
>
Exactly what I had in mine.



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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.

[Lee D. Rothstein]

Andy Koppe wrote:
> Andy Koppe wrote:
>   
>> Lee D. Rothstein wrote:
>>     
>>> I do lots of bash scripting including Windows/DOS commands, and I
>>> can think of only one character cell app that ever gave me any
>>> trouble from rxvt or xterm (whatever that app is -- I think a
>>> Kit app), I found a work-around and never needed it
>>> again.
>>>       
>> 'net' is a troublesome command that's been mentioned, although it seems
>> to be ok for basic stuff. But I guess there might be still be a few DOS
>> fullscreen apps around. Turbo Pascal perhaps? But yeah, I'd sooner
>> implement tabs than worry about DOS apps. ;)
>>     
>
> "full screen" or "DOS" is a red herring. Any program that does something
> like the following, if compiled as a native program, won't work in rxvt
> (or MinTTY, or cygwin/cmd-shell-with-CYGWIN=tty):
>
> #include <stdio.h>
> main() {
>   int c;
>   while ((c = getc(stdin)) != EOF) fputc(c, stdout);
> }
>
> The thing is, THIS program works as part of a pipeline even when
> compiled as a native program -- but it breaks if you try to use it
> interactively within rxvt/MinTTY/etc.  A cygwin-compiled version works
> in all cases.
>
> --
> Chuck
>
>
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>
>   

Nice example! Who is "Chuck"?

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Re: First Pass at mintty documentation; etc.

[Charles Wilson]

Lee D. Rothstein wrote:
> Andy Koppe wrote:
>> -- 
>> Chuck
>> 
> Nice example! Who is "Chuck"?

Me. As I explained to Andy off-list, the 'Virtual Identify' Thunderbird
plugin got kinda confused, and tried to pass off my email as if Andy had
sent it.  Bad Virtual Identity! No Cookie!

--
Chuck



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Re: keycodes

[Andrew DeFaria]

Matt Wozniski wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 1:05 AM, Andrew DeFaria wrote:
>   
>> Andy Koppe wrote:
>>     
>>> Andrew DeFaria wrote:
>>>       
>>>>>>  > "\e[1;5A": history-search-backward
>>>>>>  > "\e[1;5B": history-search-forward
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Perhaps I don't understand this 'bash' feature, but it doesn't seem to
>>>>>> work for me.
>>>>>>             
>>>>> Start typing a command, press Ctrl-Up, and it finds the previous line in
>>>>> the history that started like that.
>>>>>           
>>>> Why not simply type Ctrl-R then the first few letters of a command (or
>>>> some letters in the middle of a command). Works great! Requires no support
>>>> from any terminal emulator...
>>>>         
>>> Yes, obviously you can bind the history search to any key you like.
>>>       
>> The points were, since you seemed to have missed them, that 1) that's the
>> default binding for bash
>>     
>
> It's a default binding for bash that does something different than the
> suggested binding.  It's great that you can do both, but they're not
> the same.  I know of both, use both, and find history-search-backward
> and history-search-forward much more useful more of the time than
> reverse-search-history and forward-search-history.
>
>   
>> and 2) it doesn't require MinTTY, nor xterm, nor
>> any particular terminal emulator. IOW it works out of the box, in fact works
>> in Cygwin's bash Windows console window
>>     
>
> It works with all terminal emulators that are set up to send CTRL+R as
> the single byte 0x12 - nearly all do by default, but there's no reason
> they have to.  xterm can be configured to send CSI 27;5;114 ~
> instead.  Andy's suggestion works with all terminal emulators that
> send CSI 1;5 A for CTRL+UP - again, most do, but not all.  There's no
> difference between the two here, apart from one binding being default
> and the other being added with .inputrc.
>
>   
>> and does not even restrict you to
>> locating only the start of a command. All win, win, win situations as I see
>> it.
>>     
>
> The fact that it's "restricted" to only working at the start of the
> line is why it's more useful more of the time for me.  I sometimes
> want to find a command that contained 'foobar' as one of its arguments
> somewhere on the line - but, much more often, I want to find that
> cryptic ctags invocation, or that find command, etc.  If I know what
> the line begins with, then searching with CTRL+R just gives me false
> positives that I need to skip over.
>
> ~Matt
>   
Like I said - to each his own...
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
Old dog still learning - please don't shoot yet


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