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

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Reuben,

On 14 Aug 2011, at 20:03, Reuben Thomas wrote:
> On 14 August 2011 13:59, Gary V. Vaughan <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Hi Reuben,
>> 
>> On 11 Aug 2011, at 18:28, Reuben Thomas wrote:
>>> On 11 August 2011 12:27, Gary V. Vaughan <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>>> Malfunctioning keys? Read the FAQ at <FILENAME> or <URL>.
>> 
>> The plot thickens.
> 
> Thanks.

Heh, don't thank me.  Apple can take all the credit for this
particular goose chase =)O|

> What happens if you install a more recent ncurses? That is the next
> simplest option I can think of.

I'm loathe to try, for a couple of reasons:

 1. It seems quite sensible to me that ncurses lists the xterm Fn
    key escape sequences in the terminfo database for xterm-color,
    so I'd be surprised if a newer version of ncurses has changed
    to listing vt100 Fn key escape sequences.
 2. It seems dumb to me that the xterm Fn key escape sequences in
    the terminfo database for xterm are actually vt100 escape
    sequences.  I'm sure the latest version of ncurses doesn't do
    that.  In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if ncurses has
    never done that, and the changes on my Mac were hacked in by
    Apple.  If I upgrade to a correct xterm terminfo entry (one
    that uses xterm Fn key escape sequences), then it will join the
    ranks of the xterm-color entry in not matching what Terminal.app
    is sending, causing it too to stop working.

This is an interesting datapoint:

address@hidden infocmp nsterm                                                   
      
#       Reconstructed via infocmp from file: /usr/share/terminfo/6e/nsterm    
nsterm|Apple_Terminal|AppKit Terminal.app v41+ w/MacRoman charset (color),
[[...]]

..so apparently nsterm is the "correct" terminal type for some version
of Apple's Terminal.app... but it is merely broken in a different
way for the current release.

Unfortunately this brings us back to our original sticking point:

  1. I would like Zile to work correctly out of the box on a vanilla
     Mac OS X installation, just like Emacs does.
  2. You would rather instruct each user in how to fix their terminfo
     issues once and for all so other Fn key using curses applications
     will work too.

I've been flirting with iTerm2 (a Terminal.app alternative), which has
a ton of excellent features way beyond what Apple's terminal provides
- but unfortunately, it has horrible colour management, crashes every
24 hours or so, and makes the fans on my laptop go into overdrive when
I have a lot of text paging past quickly (e.g. running ./configure on
C Zile).  It does work with the ncurses that Apple ships with Lion
though. Out of interest, iTerm2 also sends vt100 escape sequences for
F1-F4, but it sets the default TERM to xterm, so everything matches.

Maybe recommending xterm as the default setting for Terminal.app in
the FAQ instead of nsterm is the next step?

After that... I'm far from convinced that the world will be a better
place if I revert 45e1c21. :(

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