Re: [Bug-zile] Mac Terminal.app problems: TERM=nsterm FTW

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Reuben,

On 11 Aug 2011, at 07:00, Reuben Thomas wrote:
> Setting TERM=nsterm fixes #33907 for me (and #33908 is unaffected; as
> I said in the bug report, I cannot repro it on a freshly installed
> Lion machine).

Agreed.  I missed the nsterm advice from your last post on the matter,
sorry.

> Further, a terminfo definition for nsterm is distributed with ncurses,
> so setting TERM=nsterm on the Mac is acceptable for general use, e.g.
> ssh-ing, at least provided the remote machines have a reasonably
> recent ncurses with all its terminfo definitions installed. This at
> least takes care of a large swathe of uses (e.g. current Linux distros
> will all be fine).

Agreed.

> Hence, with no changes to Zile, we can just say "to get working
> function keys and Ctrl-H, set TERM=nsterm in your Terminal prefs".

That's true, and as you say it will help Mac users to interact properly
with all of their terminal based applications.

> I do not think this is too much to expect of users of a proprietary OS
> that ships with broken-by-default settings. (Similarly, I'm not
> worried about users who need a TERM setting that works on older remote
> machines, e.g. xterm or xterm-color: they can reconfigure Terminal.app
> appropriately so that it works with the default setting of TERM.)
> 
> How does that sound?

I can't deny that I still find it a little disappointing that Zile won't
"just work" with this scheme, and we're relying on users to pursue the
problems with C-h vs DELETE and F1 thru F4 until they find instructions
on how to implement (the admittedly quite correct) solution.  Especially
consider how widely it will be encountered (there are a lot of Mac OS
users out there).  However, your argument is impeccable, so I can only
accept it.

I think the thing that irks me the most is that two of the affected keys
remove all means for a new user to discover how to fix it through self-
discovery while in Zile (C-h and <f1> are the default bindings for the
help functions).  Since this is such a fundamental issue, I think we
might try to mitigate it by adding back the view-emacs-FAQ function,
along with a binding that doesn't use C-h or <f1> and a(nother) amendment
to the splash screen:

==========================================================================
Welcome to GNU Zile.

Get Help        C-h (Hold down CTRL and press h)
View Zile FAQ   C-c h       Visit new file  C-x C-f
Undo changes    C-x u       Exit Zile       C-x C-c
(`C-' means use the CTRL key.  `M-' means hold the META (or ALT) key.
If you have no META key, you may type ESC followed by the character.)

GNU Zile 2.4.0.60
Copyright (C) 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

GNU Zile comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
Zile is Free Software--Free as in Freedom--so you can redistribute copies
of Zile and modify it; see the file COPYING. Otherwise, a copy can be
downloaded from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html.

==========================================================================

The key here being that if a new user runs Zile, and presses C-h for help
as instructed to get an introduction to the editor, but experiences the
dreaded Mac OS terminfo breakage (or other C-h binding issues) and nothing
much apart from a terminal beep happens, at least they can get to the FAQ
with instructions on how to fix it without having to leave (and maybe
never come back!).

If you agree, I'll commit a patch on all 3 branches (which have gone out
of sync with their various splash screens already anyway).

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)