Merged from
[bpt/emacs.git] / README.multi-tty
1 -*- coding: utf-8; mode: text; -*-
2 GOAL
3 ----
4
5 This branch implements support for opening multiple, different tty
6 devices and simultaneous X and tty frames from a single Emacs session.
7
8 Some use cases:
9 Emacs is notoriously slow at startup, so most people use another
10 editor or emacsclient for quick editing jobs from the console.
11 Unfortunately, emacsclient was very awkward to use, because it did not
12 support opening a new Emacs frame on the current virtual tty.
13 Now, with multi-tty support, it can do that. (Emacsclient starts up
14 faster than vi!)
15
16 Some Gnus users (including me) run Gnus in an X frame in its own Emacs
17 instance, which they typically leave running for weeks. It would be
18 nice if they could connect to this instance from a remote ssh session
19 and check their messages without opening a remote X frame or resorting
20 to gnus-slave.
21
22 WHO IS DOING IT
23 ---------------
24
25 I'm Károly Lőrentey. My address: lorentey@elte.hu.
26
27 Comments, bug reports, suggestions and patches are welcome; send them
28 to multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu.
29
30 The following is a (sadly incomplete) list of people who have
31 contributed to the project by testing, submitting patches, bug
32 reports, and suggestions. Thanks!
33
34 Bernard Adrian <bernadrian@free.fr>
35 ARISAWA Akihiro <ari@mbf.ocn.ne.jp>
36 Vincent Bernat <bernat@luffy.cx>
37 Han Boetes <han@mijncomputer.nl>
38 Francisco Borges <borges@let.rug.nl>
39 Damien Cassou <damien.cassou@laposte.net>
40 Robert J. Chassell <bob@rattlesnake.com>
41 Romain Francoise <romain@orebokech.com>
42 Ami Fischman <ami@fischman.org>
43 Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs <friedel@nomaden.org>
44 IRIE Tetsuya <irie@t.email.ne.jp>
45 Yoshiaki Kasahara <kasahara@nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp>
46 Bas Kok <nekkobassu@yahoo.com>
47 Jurej Kubelka <Juraj.Kubelka@email.cz>
48 David Lichteblau <david@lichteblau.com>
49 mace <mace@kirjakaapeli.lib.hel.fi>
50 Xavier Mallard <zedek@gnu-rox.org>
51 Istvan Marko <mi-mtty@kismala.com>
52 Ted Morse <morse@ciholas.com>
53 Gergely Nagy <algernon@debian.org>
54 Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu>
55 Kalle Olavi Niemitalo <kon@iki.fi>
56 Mark Plaksin <happy@mcplaksin.org>
57 Frank Ruell <stoerte@dreamwarrior.net>
58 Tom Schutzer-Weissmann <trmsw@yahoo.co.uk>
59 Joakim Verona <joakim@verona.se>
60 Dan Waber <dwaber@logolalia.com>
61 and many others.
62
63 Richard Stallman was kind enough to review an earlier version of my
64 patches.
65
66
67 MAILING LISTS
68 -------------
69
70 The multi-tty mailing list (discussion & bug reports):
71
72 Address: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
73 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty
74 Archive: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.multi-tty/
75
76 Commit notifications (read-only):
77
78 Address: multi-tty-commits@lists.fnord.hu
79 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty-commits
80
81
82 STATUS
83 ------
84
85 The branch is now very stable and almost full-featured. All of the
86 major problems have been fixed, only a few minor issues remain. (It
87 still needs to be ported to Windows/Mac/DOS, though.) Both multiple
88 tty device support and simultaneous X and tty frame support works
89 fine. Emacsclient has been extended to support opening new tty and X
90 frames. It has been changed to open new Emacs frames by default.
91
92 The multi-tty branch has been scheduled for inclusion in the next
93 major release of Emacs (version 23). I expect the merge into the
94 development trunk to occur sometime during next year (2006), after the
95 merge of the Unicode branch.
96
97 Tested on GNU/Linux, Solaris 8, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Please let me
98 know if you succeed or fail to use it on other platforms---I'll have a
99 few tricky test cases for you.
100
101 Known problems:
102
103 * GTK support. If you compile your Emacs with the GTK
104 toolkit, some functionality of multi-tty will be lost. In
105 particular, you will not be able to work on multiple X
106 displays at once. Current releases of GTK have limitations
107 and bugs that prevent full-blown multi-display support in
108 Emacs. (GTK crashes when Emacs tries to disconnect from an
109 X server.) Use the Lucid toolkit if you want to see a
110 complete feature set.
111
112 * The single-kboard mode.
113
114 If your multi-tty Emacs session seems to be frozen, you
115 probably have a recursive editing session or a pending
116 minibuffer prompt (which is a kind of recursive editing) on
117 another display. To unfreeze your session, switch to that
118 display and complete the recursive edit, for example by
119 pressing C-] (`abort-recursive-edit').
120
121 I am sorry to say that currently there is no way to break
122 out of this "single-kboard mode" from a frozen display. If
123 you are unable to switch to the display that locks the
124 others (for example because it is on a remote computer),
125 then you can use emacsclient to break out of all recursive
126 editing sessions:
127
128 emacsclient -e '(top-level)'
129
130 Note that this (perhaps) unintuitive behaviour is by design.
131 Single-kboard mode is required because of an intrinsic Emacs
132 limitation that is very hard to eliminate. (This limitation
133 is related to the single-threaded nature of Emacs.)
134
135 I plan to implement better user notification and support for
136 breaking out of single-kboard mode from locked displays.
137
138 * Mac, Windows and DOS support is broken, doesn't even
139 compile. Multiple display support will probably not provide
140 new Emacs features on these systems, but the multi-tty
141 branch changed a few low-level interfaces, and the
142 system-dependent source files need to be adapted
143 accordingly. The changes are mostly trivial, so almost
144 anyone can help, if only by compiling the branch and
145 reporting the compiler errors.
146
147
148 HOW TO GET THE BRANCH
149 ---------------------
150
151 The branch uses Bazaar 1 (http://bazaar.canonical.com) for version control.
152
153 Retrieving the latest version of the branch:
154
155 baz register-archive -f http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/arch/2004
156 baz get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
157
158 This incantation uses an archive mirror that is hosted on a
159 high-bandwidth site. Please note that on average there is a two-hour
160 delay for commits to arrive on this mirror. My primary mirror is on the
161 low-bandwidth http://lorentey.hu/ site:
162
163 baz register-archive -f http://lorentey.hu/arch/2004/
164 baz get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
165
166 This is "instantly" updated, but very slow from outside Hungary.
167 (By "instantly" I mean as soon as I connect the notebook I work on to
168 a network. It could take days.)
169
170 The Arch supermirror provides mirroring services for all public Arch
171 repositories. We have a mirror there, too, if you prefer.
172
173 baz register-archive -f http://mirrors.sourcecontrol.net/lorentey%40elte.hu--2004
174 baz get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
175
176 My GPG key id is 0FB27A3F; it is available from
177 hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net/, or from my homepage at
178 http://lorentey.hu/rolam/gpg.html)
179
180 Don't worry if the above checkout takes a few minutes to complete;
181 once you have a source tree, updating it to the latest revision will
182 be _much_ faster. Use the following command for the update:
183
184 baz replay
185
186 You can find more information about Bazaar on
187 http://bazaar.canonical.com/. It's a distributed source control
188 system that is somewhat less broken than competing projects.
189
190 If you don't have Bazaar, the branch has a homepage from which you can
191 download conventional patches against Emacs CVS HEAD:
192
193 http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.html
194
195 I suggest you use Bazaar whenever feasible.
196
197
198 DEBIAN PACKAGES
199 ---------------
200
201 If you run Debian, or a distribution based on Debian, you are welcome
202 to use our binary packages; put these lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list:
203
204 # Multi-tty Emacs
205 deb http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt unstable multi-tty
206 deb-src http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt unstable multi-tty
207
208 Note that these packages are intended solely to provide an easy way to
209 test the new multi-tty features. They are not to be taken as Emacs
210 releases, and it's a mistake to expect robust operation or any kind of
211 timely support for them. Do not install them, unless you'd like to
212 have your editor crash on you.
213
214
215 COMPILATION
216 -----------
217
218 The multi-tty branch is compiled the same way as Emacs itself:
219
220 make maintainer-clean # (If you have compiled Emacs before)
221
222 ./configure --without-gtk <your favourite options>
223 make bootstrap
224 make install
225
226 If you have strange compilation errors, they may be caused by old
227 *.elc files that are left over from an earlier bootstrap. The `make
228 maintainer-clean' target deletes them, so it is a good idea to run
229 that before reporting a bug. (Emacs requires a clean recompilation
230 after certain kinds of source code changes.)
231
232 TESTING
233 -------
234
235 To test the multi-tty branch, start up the Emacs server with the
236 following commands:
237
238 emacs
239 M-x server-start
240
241 and then (from a shell prompt on another terminal) start emacsclient
242 with
243 emacsclient -t /optional/file/names... (for a tty frame)
244 emacsclient /optional/file/names... (for an X frame)
245
246 (Make sure both emacs and emacsclient are multi-tty versions.)
247 You'll hopefully have two fully working, independent frames on
248 separate terminals. The new frame is closed automatically when you
249 finish editing the specified files (C-x #), but delete-frame (C-x 5 0)
250 also works. Of course, you can create frames on more than two tty
251 devices.
252
253 Creating new frames on the same tty with C-x 5 2 (make-frame-command)
254 works, and behaves the same way as in previous Emacs versions. If you
255 exit emacs, all terminals should be restored to their previous states.
256
257 This is work in progress, and probably full of bugs. It is a good
258 idea to run emacs from gdb, so that you'll have a live instance to
259 debug if something goes wrong. Please send me your bug reports on our
260 mailing list: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
261
262 TIPS & TRICKS
263 -------------
264
265 I think the best way to use the new Emacs is to have it running inside
266 a disconnected GNU screen session, and always use emacsclient for
267 normal work. One advantage of this is that not a single keystroke of
268 your work will be lost if the display device that you are using
269 crashes, or the network connection times out, or whatever. (I had an
270 extremely unstable X server for some time while I was developing these
271 patches, and running Emacs this way has saved me a number of M-x
272 recover-session invocations.)
273
274 I use the following two bash scripts to handle my Emacs sessions:
275
276 -------------------------------------------------------connect-emacs--
277 #!/bin/bash
278 # Usage: connect-emacs <name> <args>...
279 #
280 # Connects to the Emacs instance called NAME. Starts up the instance
281 # if it is not already running. The rest of the arguments are passed
282 # to emacsclient.
283
284 name="$1"
285 shift
286
287 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
288 echo "Usage: connect_emacs <name> <args>..." >&2
289 exit 1
290 fi
291 preload-emacs "$name" wait
292 /usr/bin/emacsclient.emacs-multi-tty -s "$name" "$@"
293 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
294
295 -------------------------------------------------------preload-emacs--
296 #!/bin/bash
297 # Usage: preload-emacs <name> [<waitp>]
298 #
299 # Preloads the Emacs instance called NAME in a detached screen
300 # session. Does nothing if the instance is already running. If WAITP
301 # is non-empty, the function waits until the server starts up and
302 # creates its socket; otherwise it returns immediately.
303
304 name="$1"
305 waitp="$2"
306 screendir="/var/run/screen/S-$USER"
307 serverdir="/tmp/emacs$UID"
308 emacs=/usr/bin/emacs-multi-tty # Or wherever you installed your multi-tty Emacs
309
310 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
311 echo "Usage: preload_emacs <name> [<waitp>]" >&2
312 exit 1
313 fi
314
315 if [ ! -e "$screendir"/*."$name" ]; then
316 if [ -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; then
317 # Delete leftover socket (for the wait option)
318 rm "$serverdir/$name"
319 fi
320 screen -dmS "$name" "$emacs" -nw --eval "(setq server-name \"$name\")" -f server-start
321 fi
322 if [ ! -z "$waitp" ]; then
323 while [ ! -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; do sleep 0.1; done
324 fi
325 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
326
327 I have the following in my profile to have two instances automatically
328 preloaded for editing and email:
329
330 preload-emacs editor
331 preload-emacs gnus
332
333 It is useful to set up short aliases for connect-emacs. I use the
334 following:
335
336 alias edit="connect-emacs editor"
337 alias e=edit
338 alias et="connect-emacs editor -t"
339 alias gnus="connect-emacs gnus"
340
341
342 CHANGELOG
343 ---------
344
345 See arch logs.
346
347
348 NEWS
349 ----
350
351 For the NEWS file: (Needs much, much work)
352
353 ** Support for multiple terminal devices and simultaneous graphical
354 and tty frames has been added. You can test for the presence of
355 this feature in your Lisp code by testing for the `multi-tty'
356 feature.
357
358 *** The `window-system' variable has been made frame-local. The new
359 `initial-window-system' variable contains the `window-system'
360 value for the first frame.
361
362 *** You can specify a terminal device (`tty' parameter) and a terminal
363 type (`tty-type' parameter) to `make-terminal-frame'.
364
365 *** The new function `make-frame-on-tty' allows you to create a new
366 frame on another tty device interactively.
367
368 *** The function `make-frame-on-display' now works during a tty
369 session, and `make-frame-on-tty' works during a graphical session.
370
371 *** Emacsclient has been extended to support opening a new terminal
372 frame. Its behaviour has been changed to open a new Emacs frame by
373 default. Use the -c option to get the old behavior of opening
374 files in the currently selected Emacs frame.
375
376 *** C-z now invokes `suspend-frame', C-x C-c now invokes
377 `save-buffers-kill-terminal'.
378
379 *** New functions: frame-tty-name, frame-tty-type, delete-tty,
380 suspend-tty, resume-tty, terminal-id, terminal-parameters,
381 terminal-parameter, set-terminal-parameter,
382 modify-terminal-parameters, environment, let-environment
383
384 *** New variables: local-key-translation-map, local-function-key-map
385
386 *** The `keyboard-translate-table' variable and the terminal and
387 keyboard coding systems have been made terminal-local.
388
389 *** In addition to the global key-translation-map and
390 function-key-map, Emacs has terminal-local
391 local-key-translation-map and local-function-key-map variables,
392 and uses them instead of the global keymaps to set up translations
393 and function key sequences relevant to a specific terminal device.
394
395 *** talk.el has been extended for multiple tty support.
396
397 * * *
398
399 (The rest of this file consists of my development notes and as such it
400 is probably not very interesting for anyone else.)
401
402 THINGS TO DO
403 ------------
404
405 ** emacsclient -t on the console does not work after su:
406
407 # su lorentey
408 $ emacsclient -t
409 *ERROR*: Could not open file: /dev/tty1
410
411 The tty can be opened as /dev/tty by emacsclient, but not by Emacs.
412 This seems to be a serious problem. Currently my only idea is to
413 bring back the ugly pty proxy hack from the initial versions of
414 multi-tty. Suggestions would be appreciated.
415
416 ** Understand how `quit_throw_to_read_char' works, and fix any bugs
417 that come to light.
418
419 ** See if getcjmp can be eliminated somehow. Why does Emacs allow
420 asynchronous input processing while it's reading input anyway?
421
422 ** `delete-frame' events are handled by `special-event-map'
423 immediately when read by `read_char'. This is fine but it prevents
424 higher-level keymaps from binding that event to get notified of the
425 deleted frame.
426
427 Sometimes it would be useful for Lisp code to be notified of frame
428 deletions after they have happened, usually because they want to
429 clean up after the deleted frame. Not all frame-local states can
430 be stored as a frame parameter. For example,
431 `display-splash-screen' uses `recursive-edit' with a special keymap
432 override to create its buffer---and it leads to all kinds of
433 nastiness if Emacs stays in this recursive edit mode after the
434 frame containing the splash screen is deleted. Basically, the
435 splash-screen implementation wants to throw out of the recursive
436 edit when the frame is deleted; however, it is not legal to throw
437 from `delete-frame-functions' because `delete-frame' must not fail.
438 (Introducing `delete-frame-after-functions' would not help either
439 because `delete-frame' may not fail at that time either.)
440
441 Currently `fancy-splash-screens' installs a
442 `delete-frame-functions' hook that sets up a timer to exit the
443 recursive edit. This is an adequate solution, but it would perhaps
444 be better to have something like a `frame-deleted' event that could
445 be bound in the normal way.
446
447 ** Trouble: `setenv' doesn't actually set environment variables in the
448 Emacs process. This defeats the purpose of the elaborate
449 `server-with-environment' magic around the `tgetent' call in
450 `init_tty'. D'oh.
451
452 ** (Possibly) create hooks in struct device for creating frames on a
453 specific terminal, and eliminate the hackish terminal-related frame
454 parameters (display, tty, tty-type).
455
456 make_terminal_frame
457 create_tty_output
458
459 ** Decide whether to keep the C implementation of terminal parameters,
460 or revert to the previous, purely Lisp code. It turned out that
461 local environments do not need terminal parameters after all.
462
463 ** Move Fsend_string_to_terminal to term.c, and declare get_named_tty
464 as static, removing it from dispextern.h.
465 Move fatal to emacs.c and declare it somewhere.
466
467 ** Search for `suspend-emacs' references and replace them with
468 `suspend-frame', if necessary. Ditto for `save-buffers-kill-emacs'
469 vs. `save-buffers-kill-display'.
470
471 ** Emacs crashes when a tty frame is resized so that there is no space
472 for all its windows. (Tom Schutzer-Weissmann)
473
474 ** Report GTK multi-display problems to GTK maintainers. For extra
475 credit, fix them.
476
477 Currently you can not connect to new X displays when you compile
478 Emacs with GTK support. If you want to play around with GTK
479 multidisplay (and don't mind core dumps), you can edit src/config.h
480 and define HAVE_GTK_MULTIDISPLAY there by hand.
481
482 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715
483
484 Update: Han reports that GTK+ version 2.8.9 almost gets display
485 disconnects right. GTK will probably be fully fixed by the time
486 multi-tty gets into the trunk.
487
488 Update: I am still having problems with GTK+ 2.8.10. I have the
489 impression that the various multidisplay fixes will only get
490 released in GTK+ 2.10.
491
492 ** Audit `face-valid-attribute-values' usage in customize and
493 elsewhere. Its return value depends on the current window system.
494 Replace static initializers using it with runtime functions. For
495 example, custom's buttons are broken on non-initial device types.
496
497 ** Possibly turn off the double C-g feature when there is an X frame.
498 C.f. (emacs)Emergency Escape.
499
500 ** frames-on-display-list should also accept frames.
501
502 ** Consider the `tty-type' frame parameter and the `display-tty-type'
503 function. They serve the exact same purpose. I think it may be
504 a good idea to eliminate one of them, preferably `tty-type'.
505
506 ** The handling of lisp/term/*.el, and frame creation in general, is a
507 big, big mess. How come the terminal-specific file is loaded by
508 tty-create-frame-with-faces? I don't think it is necessary to load
509 these files for each frame; once per terminal should be enough.
510 Update: lisp/term/*.el is not loaded repeatedly anymore, but
511 faces.el still needs to be cleaned up.
512
513 ** Fix frame-set-background-mode in this branch. It was recently
514 changed in CVS, and frame.el in multi-tty has not yet been adapted
515 for the changes. (It needs to look at
516 default-frame-background-mode.) (Update: maybe it is fixed now;
517 needs testing.) (Note that the byte compiler has this to say about
518 term/rxvt.el:)
519
520 term/rxvt.el:309:17:Warning: assignment to free variable
521 `default-frame-background-mode'
522
523 ** I think `(set-)terminal-local-value' and the terminal parameter
524 mechanism should be integrated into a single framework.
525
526 (Update: `(set-)terminal-local-value' is now eliminated, but the
527 terminal-local variables should still be accessible as terminal
528 parameters. This also applies to `display-name' and similar
529 functions.)
530
531 ** Add the following hooks: after-delete-frame-hook (for server.el,
532 instead of delete-frame-functions),
533 after-delete-terminal-functions, after-create-terminal-functions.
534
535 ** BULK RENAME: The `display-' prefix of new Lisp-level functions
536 conflicts with stuff like `display-time-mode'. Use `device-'
537 or `terminal-' instead. I think I prefer `terminal-'.
538
539 It turns out that most of the offending Lisp functions were defined
540 in the trunk. Therefore, compatibility aliases should be defined
541 for the following names:
542
543 display-color-cells terminal-color-cells
544 display-color-p terminal-color-p
545 display-graphic-p terminal-graphic-p
546 display-grayscale-p terminal-grayscale-p
547 display-images-p terminal-images-p
548 display-mm-height terminal-mm-height
549 display-mm-width terminal-mm-width
550 display-mouse-p terminal-mouse-p
551 display-multi-font-p terminal-multi-font-p
552 display-multi-frame-p terminal-multi-frame-p
553 display-pixel-height terminal-pixel-height
554 display-pixel-width terminal-pixel-width
555 display-pixels-per-inch terminal-pixels-per-inch
556 display-planes terminal-planes
557 display-popup-menus-p terminal-popup-menus-p
558 display-save-under terminal-save-under
559 display-screens terminal-screens
560 display-supports-face-attributes-p terminal-supports-face-attributes-p
561 display-visual-class terminal-visual-class
562 framep-on-display framep-on-terminal
563 frames-on-display-list frames-on-terminal-list
564
565 The following functions were introduced in the multi-tty branch, and
566 were renamed without aliases:
567
568 delete-display delete-terminal
569 display-controlling-tty-p controlling-tty-p
570 display-list terminal-list
571 display-live-p terminal-live-p
572 display-name terminal-name
573 display-tty-type tty-type
574 frame-display frame-terminal
575 selected-display selected-terminal
576
577 ** The single-keyboard mode of MULTI_KBOARD is extremely confusing
578 sometimes; Emacs does not respond to stimuli from other keyboards.
579 At least a beep or a message would be important, if the single-mode
580 is still required to prevent interference. (Reported by Dan
581 Nicolaescu.)
582
583 Update: selecting a region with the mouse enables single_kboard
584 under X. This is very confusing.
585
586 Update: After discussions with Richard Stallman, this will be
587 resolved by having locked displays warn the user to wait, and
588 introducing a complex protocol to remotely bail out of
589 single-kboard mode by pressing C-g.
590
591 Update: Warning the user is not trivial to implement, as Emacs has
592 only one echo area, shared by all frames. Ideally the warning
593 should not be displayed on the display that is locking the others.
594 Perhaps the high probability of user confusion caused by
595 single_kboard mode deserves a special case in the display code.
596 Alternatively, it might be good enough to signal single_kboard mode
597 by changing the modelines or some other frame-local display element
598 on the locked out displays.
599
600 Update: In fact struct kboard does have an echo_string slot.
601
602 ** The session management module is prone to crashes when the X
603 connection is closed and then later I try to connect to a new X
604 session:
605
606 #0 0xb7ebc806 in SmcGetIceConnection () from /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6
607 #1 0x080e6641 in x_session_check_input (bufp=0xbf86c9c0) at xsmfns.c:144
608 #2 0x080d3bbc in XTread_socket (device=0xa722ff8, expected=1, hold_quit=0xbf86ca90) at xterm.c:7037
609 #3 0x080fa404 in read_avail_input (expected=1) at keyboard.c:6696
610 #4 0x080fa4ca in handle_async_input () at keyboard.c:6900
611 #5 0x080d51fa in x_term_init (display_name=162628899, xrm_option=0x0, resource_name=0x857068c "emacs") at xterm.c:10622
612 #6 0x080d920e in x_display_info_for_name (name=162628899) at xfns.c:3975
613 #7 0x080d92f9 in check_x_display_info (object=1) at xfns.c:274
614 #8 0x080d97b8 in Fx_create_frame (parms=151221485) at xfns.c:3016
615 #9 0x0815bf72 in Ffuncall (nargs=2, args=0xbf86ceec) at eval.c:2851
616
617 I installed a workaround to prevent this. The X session manager is
618 only contacted when the very first display in the Emacs session is
619 an X display. Also, x_delete_display() on this display aborts
620 session management, and XTread_socket only calls
621 x_session_check_input when it is called for the display that the
622 session was opened on. While this does not really fix the bug, it
623 makes it much less frequent, because session manager support will
624 not normally be enabled when Emacs can survive the shutdown of the
625 X server.
626
627 See if xsmfns.c should be updated.
628
629 ** Hunt down display-related functions in frame.el and extend them all
630 to accept display ids.
631
632 ** rif->flush_display_optional (NULL) calls should be replaced by a
633 new global function.
634
635 ** The set-locale-environment hack (adding the DISPLAY option) should
636 be replaced with a clean design.
637
638 ** standard-display-table should be display-local.
639 standard-display-european should be display-local.
640
641 ** With iswitchb-default-method set to 'always-frame, only frames on
642 the current display should be considered. This might involve
643 extending `get-buffer-window'.
644
645 ** Have a look at Vlocale_coding_system. Seems like it would be a
646 tedious job to localize it, although most references use it for
647 interfacing with libc and are therefore OK with the global
648 definition.
649
650 Exceptions found so far: x-select-text and
651 x-cut-buffer-or-selection-value.
652
653 ** Have a look at fatal_error_hook.
654
655 ** Have a look at set_frame_matrix_frame.
656
657 ** Check if we got term-setup-hook right.
658
659 ** I think tip_frame should be display-local.
660
661 ** Check display reference count handling in x_create_tip_frame.
662
663 ** make-frame does not correctly handle extra parameters in its
664 argument:
665
666 (frame-parameter (make-frame (list (cons 'foobar 42))) 'foobar)
667 => nil
668
669 (This is likely an error in the CVS trunk.)
670
671 ** Dan Nicolaescu suggests that -nw should be added as an alias for -t
672 in emacsclient. Good idea. (Alas, implementing this is not
673 trivial, getopt_long does not seem to support two-letter ``short''
674 options. Patches are welcome.)
675
676 ** Mark Plaksin suggests that emacsclient should accept the same
677 X-related command-line arguments as Emacs. Most of the X-related
678 argument-handling is done in Lisp, so this should be quite easy to
679 implement.
680
681 ** Gergely Nagy suggests that C-x # should only kill the current
682 frame, not any other emacsclient frame that may have the same file
683 opened for editing. I think I agree with him.
684
685 ** Very strange bug: visible-bell does not work on secondary
686 terminals in xterm and konsole. The screen does flicker a bit,
687 but it's so quick it isn't noticable.
688
689 (Update: This is probably some problem with padding or whatnot on
690 the secondary terminals.)
691
692 ** Move baud_rate to struct display.
693
694 ** Implement support for starting an interactive Emacs session without
695 an initial frame. (The user would connect to it and open frames
696 later, with emacsclient.)
697
698 ** Fix Mac support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
699 current state of Mac-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
700 are not useful; before starting work on Mac support, revert to
701 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
702
703 ** Fix W32 support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
704 current state of W32-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
705 are not useful; before starting work on W32 support, revert to
706 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
707
708 ** Fix DOS support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
709 current state of DOS-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
710 are not useful; before starting work on DOS support, revert to
711 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
712
713 ** Do a grep on XXX and ?? for more issues.
714
715 ** flow-ctrl.el must be updated.
716
717 ** Fix stuff_char for multi-tty. Doesn't seem to be of high priority.
718
719 DIARY OF CHANGES
720 ----------------
721
722 (ex-TODO items with explanations.)
723
724 -- Introduce a new struct for terminal devices.
725
726 (Done, see struct tty_output. The list of members is not yet
727 complete.)
728
729 -- Change the bootstrap procedure to initialize tty_list.
730
731 (Done, but needs review.)
732
733 -- Change make-terminal-frame to support specifying another tty.
734
735 (Done, new frame parameters: `tty' and `tty-type'.)
736
737 -- Implement support for reading from multiple terminals.
738
739 (Done, read_avail_input tries to read from each terminal, until one
740 succeeds. MULTI_KBOARD is not used. Secondary terminals don't send
741 SIGIO!)
742
743 (Update: They do, now.)
744
745 (Update2: After enabling X, they don't.)
746
747 -- other-frame should cycle through the frames on the `current'
748 terminal only.
749
750 (Done, by trivially modifiying next_frame and prev_frame.)
751
752 -- Support different terminal sizes.
753
754 (Done, no problem.)
755
756 -- Make sure terminal resizes are handled gracefully. (Could be
757 problematic.)
758
759 (Done. We don't get automatic SIGWINCH for additional ttys,
760 though.)
761
762 -- Extend emacsclient to automatically open a new tty when it connects
763 to Emacs.
764
765 (Done. It's an ugly hack, needs more work.)
766
767 -- Redisplay must refresh the topmost frame on *all* terminals, not
768 just the initial terminal.
769
770 (Done, but introduced an ugly redisplay problems. Ugh.)
771
772 -- Fix redisplay problems.
773
774 (Done; it turned out that the entire Wcm structure must be moved
775 inside tty_output. Why didn't I catch this earlier?)
776
777 -- Provide a way for emacsclient to tell Emacs that the tty has been
778 resized.
779
780 (Done, simply forward the SIGWINCH signal.)
781
782 -- Each keypress should automatically select the frame corresponding
783 to the terminal that it was coming from. This means that Emacs
784 must know from which terminal the last keyboard event came from.
785
786 (Done, it was quite simple, the input event system already
787 supported multiple frames.)
788
789 -- Fix SIGIO issue with secondary terminals.
790
791 (Done, emacsclient signals Emacs after writing to the proxy pseudo
792 terminal. Note that this means that multi-tty does not work with
793 raw ttys!)
794
795 (Update: This is bullshit. There is a read_input_waiting function,
796 extend that somehow.)
797
798 (Update of update: The first update was not right either, extending
799 read_input_waiting was not necessary. Secondary ttys do seem to
800 send signals on input.)
801
802 (Update^3: Not any more.)
803
804 -- Make make-terminal-frame look up the `tty' and `tty-type' frame
805 parameters from the currently selected terminal before the global
806 default.
807
808 (Done.)
809
810 -- Put all cached terminal escape sequences into struct tty_output.
811 Currently, they are still stored in global variables, so we don't
812 really support multiple terminal types.
813
814 (Done. It was not fun.)
815
816 -- Implement sane error handling after initialization. (Currently
817 emacs exits if you specify a bad terminal type.) The helpful error
818 messages must still be provided when Emacs starts.
819
820 (Done.)
821
822 -- Implement terminal deletion, i.e., deleting local frames, closing
823 the tty device and restoring its previous state without exiting
824 Emacs.
825
826 (Done, but at the moment only called when an error happens during
827 initialization. There is a memory corruption error around this
828 somewhere.) (Update: now it is fully enabled.)
829
830 -- Implement automatic deletion of terminals when the last frame on
831 that terminal is closed.
832
833 (Done.)
834
835 -- Restore tty screen after closing the terminal.
836
837 (Done, we do the same as Emacs 21.2 for all terminals.)
838
839 -- 'TERM=dumb src/emacs' does not restore the terminal state.
840
841 (Done.)
842
843 -- C-g should work on secondary terminals.
844
845 (Done, but the binding is not configurable.)
846
847 -- Deal with SIGHUP in Emacs and in emacsclient. (After this, the
848 server-frames may be removed from server.el.)
849
850 (Done, nothing to do. It seems that Emacs does not receive SIGHUP
851 from secondary ttys, which is actually a good thing.) (Update: I
852 think it would be a bad idea to remove server-frames.)
853
854 -- Change emacsclient/server.el to support the -t argument better,
855 i.e. automatically close the socket when the frame is closed.
856
857 (Seems to be working OK.)
858
859 -- Fix mysterious memory corruption error with tty deletion. To
860 trigger it, try the following shell command:
861
862 while true; do TERM=no-such-terminal-definition emacsclient -h; done
863
864 Emacs usually dumps core after a few dozen iterations. (The bug
865 seems to be related to the xfreeing or bzeroing of
866 tty_output.Wcm. Maybe there are outside references to struct Wcm?
867 Why were these vars collected into a struct before multi-tty
868 support?)
869
870 (Done. Whew. It turned out that the problem had nothing to do
871 with hypothetical external references to Wcm, or any other
872 tty_output component; it was simply that delete_tty closed the
873 filehandles of secondary ttys twice, resulting in fclose doubly
874 freeing memory. Utterly trivial matter. I love the C's memory
875 management, it puts hair on your chest.)
876
877 -- Support raw secondary terminals. (Note that SIGIO works only on
878 the controlling terminal.) Hint: extend read_input_waiting for
879 multiple ttys and hopefully this will be fixed.
880
881 (Done, it seems to have been working already for some time. It
882 seems F_SETOWN does work, after all. Not sure what made it fail
883 earlier, but it seems to be fixed (there were several changes
884 around request_sigio, maybe one of them did it).
885 read_input_waiting is only used in sys_select, don't change
886 it.) (Update: After adding X support, it's broken again.)
887 (Update^2: No it isn't.) :-)
888
889 -- Find out why does Emacs abort when it wants to close its
890 controlling tty. Hint: chan_process[] array. Hey, maybe
891 noninterrupt-IO would work, too? Update: no, there is no process
892 for stdin/out.
893
894 (Done. Added add/delete_keyboard_wait_descriptor to
895 term_init/delete_tty. The hint was right, in a way.)
896
897 -- Issue with SIGIO: it needs to be disabled during redisplay. See if
898 fcntl kernel behaviour could be emulated by emacsclient.
899
900 (Done. Simply disabled the SIGIO emulation hack in emacsclient.)
901 (Update: it was added back.) (Update^2: and removed again.)
902
903 -- server.el: There are issues with saving files in buffers of closed
904 clients. Try editing a file with emacsclient -f, and (without
905 saving it) do a delete-frame. The frame is closed without
906 question, and a surprising confirmation prompt appears in another
907 frame.
908
909 (Done. delete-frame now asks for confirmation if it still has
910 pending buffers, and modified buffers don't seem to be deleted.)
911
912 -- emacsclient.el, server.el: Handle eval or file open errors when
913 doing -t.
914
915 (Done.)
916
917 -- Make parts of struct tty_output accessible from Lisp. The device
918 name and the type is sufficient.
919
920 (Done, see frame-tty-name and frame-tty-type.)
921
922 -- Export delete_tty to the Lisp environment, for emacsclient.
923
924 (Done, see delete-tty.)
925
926 -- Get rid of the accessor macros in termchar.h, or define macros for
927 all members.
928
929 (Done.)
930
931 -- Move device-specific parameters (like costs) commonly used by
932 device backends to a common, device-dependent structure.
933
934 (Done. See struct display_method in termhooks.h.)
935
936 -- Fix X support.
937
938 (Done. Well, it seems to be working.)
939
940 -- Allow simultaneous X and tty frames. (Handling input could be
941 tricky. Or maybe not.)
942
943 (Done. Allowed, that is. It is currently extremely unstable, to
944 the point of being unusable. The rif variable causes constant
945 core dumps. Handling input is indeed tricky.)
946
947 -- Rewrite multi-tty input in terms of MULTI_KBOARD.
948
949 (Done. In fact, there was no need to rewrite anything, I just
950 added a kboard member to tty_display_info, and initialized the
951 frame's kboard from there.)
952
953 -- Fix rif issue with X-tty combo sessions. IMHO the best thing to do
954 is to get rid of that global variable (and use the value value in
955 display_method, which is guaranteed to be correct).
956
957 (Done, did exactly that. Core dumps during combo sessions became
958 much rarer. In fact, I have not yet met a single one.)
959
960 -- Add multi-tty support to talk.el.
961
962 (Done.)
963
964 -- Clean up the source of emacsclient. It is a mess.
965
966 (Done, eliminated stupid proxy-pty kludge.)
967
968 -- Fix faces on tty frames during X-tty combo sessions. There is an
969 init_frame_faces call in init_sys_modes, see if there is a problem
970 with it.
971
972 (Done, there was a stupid mistake in
973 Ftty_supports_face_attributes_p. Colors are broken, though.)
974
975 -- C-x 5 2, C-x 5 o, C-x 5 0 on an emacsclient frame unexpectedly
976 exits emacsclient. This is a result of trying to be clever with
977 delete-frame-functions.
978
979 (Fixed, added delete-tty-after-functions, and changed server.el to
980 use it.)
981
982 -- Something with (maybe) multi-keyboard support broke function keys
983 and arrows on ttys during X+tty combo sessions. Debug this.
984
985 (I can't reproduce it, maybe the terminal type was wrong.)
986
987 -- Fix input from raw ttys (again).
988
989 (Now it seems to work all right.)
990
991 -- During an X-tty combo session, a (message "Hello") from a tty frame
992 goes to the X frame. Fix this.
993
994 (Done. There was a safeguard against writing to the initial
995 terminal frame during bootstrap which prevented echo_area_display
996 from working correctly on a tty frame during a combo session.)
997
998 -- If there are no frames on its controlling terminal, Emacs should
999 exit if the user presses C-c there.
1000
1001 (Done, as far as possible. See the SIGTERM comment in
1002 interrupt_signal on why this seems to be impossible to solve this
1003 in general.)
1004
1005 -- During an X session, Emacs seems to read from stdin. Also, Emacs
1006 fails to start without a controlling tty.
1007
1008 (Fixed by replacing the troublesome termcap display with a dummy
1009 bootstrap display during bootstrap.
1010
1011 -- Do tty output through struct display, like graphical display
1012 backends.
1013
1014 (Done.)
1015
1016 -- Define an output_initial value for output_method for the initial
1017 frame that is dumped with Emacs. Checking for this frame (e.g. in
1018 cmd_error_internal) is ugly.
1019
1020 (Done, breaking interactive temacs.)
1021
1022 -- The command `emacsclient -t -e '(delete-frame)'' fails to exit.
1023
1024 (Fixed.)
1025
1026 -- frame-creation-function should always create a frame that is on the
1027 same display as the selected frame. Maybe frame-creation-function
1028 should simply be removed and make-frame changed to do the right
1029 thing.
1030
1031 (Done, with a nice hack. frame-creation-function is now frame-local.)
1032
1033 -- Fix C-g on raw ttys.
1034
1035 (Done. I disabled the interrupt/quit keys on all secondary
1036 terminals, so Emacs sees C-g as normal input. This looks like an
1037 overkill, because emacsclient has extra code to pass SIGINT to
1038 Emacs, so C-g should remain the interrupt/quit key on emacsclient
1039 frames. See the next entry why implementing this distinction would
1040 be a bad idea.)
1041
1042 -- Make sure C-g goes to the right frame with ttys. This is hard, as
1043 SIGINT doesn't have a tty parameter. :-(
1044
1045 (Done, the previous change fixes this as a pleasant side effect.)
1046
1047 -- I have seen a case when Emacs with multiple ttys fell into a loop
1048 eating 100% of CPU time. Strace showed this loop:
1049
1050 getpid() = 30284
1051 kill(30284, SIGIO) = 0
1052 --- SIGIO (I/O possible) @ 0 (0) ---
1053 ioctl(6, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
1054 ioctl(5, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
1055 ioctl(0, FIONREAD, [0]) = 0
1056 sigreturn() = ? (mask now [])
1057 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747760}, NULL) = 0
1058 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747806}, NULL) = 0
1059 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
1060 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
1061 gettimeofday({1072842297, 748245}, NULL) = 0
1062
1063 I have seen something similar with a single X frame, but have not
1064 been able to reproduce it for debugging.
1065
1066 Update: This may have been caused by checking for nread != 0
1067 instead of nread > 0 after calling read_socket_hook in
1068 read_avail_input.
1069
1070 (Fixed. This was caused by unconditionally including stdin in
1071 input_wait_mask in init_process. The select call in
1072 wait_reading_process_input always returned immediately, indicating
1073 that there is pending input from stdin, which nobody read.
1074
1075 Note that the above strace output seems to be an unrelated but
1076 similar bug. I think that is now fixed.)
1077
1078 -- Exiting Emacs while there are emacsclient frames doesn't restore the
1079 ttys to their default states.
1080
1081 (This seems to be fixed by some previous change.)
1082
1083 -- Allow opening an X session after -nw.
1084
1085 (Done.)
1086
1087 -- Fix color handling during tty+X combo sessions. (It seems that tty
1088 sessions automatically convert the face colors to terminal colors
1089 when the face is loaded. This conversion must happen instead on
1090 the fly in write_glyphs, which might be problematic, as color
1091 approximation is currently done in lisp (term/tty-colors.el).)
1092 (Update: hm, colors seem to work fine if I start emacs with -nw and
1093 then create an X frame. Maybe it's just a small buglet somewhere.)
1094
1095 (Seems to be fixed. The problem was in startup.el, it did not
1096 initialize tty colors when the initial window system was
1097 graphical.)
1098
1099 -- emacs -nw --eval '(y-or-n-p "Foobar")' segfaults. (Reported by
1100 Romain Francoise)
1101
1102 (Fixed, there was a keyboard initialization problem.)
1103
1104 -- Fix interactive use of temacs. There are face-related SEGVs, most
1105 likely because of changes in realize_default_face, realize_face.
1106
1107 (Fixed.)
1108
1109 -- Don't exit Emacs when the last X connection fails during a
1110 multi-display session.
1111
1112 (Fixed.)
1113
1114 -- Dan Nicolaescu noticed that starting emacsclient on the same
1115 terminal device that is the controlling tty of the Emacs process
1116 gives unexpected results.
1117
1118 (Fixed.)
1119
1120 -- Istvan Marko reported that Emacs hang on ttys if it was started
1121 from a shell script.
1122
1123 (Fixed. There was a bug in the multi-tty version of
1124 narrow_foreground_group. tcsetpgrp blocks if it is called from a
1125 process that is not in the same process group as the tty.)
1126
1127 -- emacsclient -t from an Emacs term buffer does not work, complains
1128 about face problems. This can even lock up Emacs (if the recursive
1129 frame sets single_kboard). Update: the face problems are caused by
1130 bugs in term.el, not in multi-tty. The lockup is caused by
1131 single_kboard mode, and is not easily resolvable. The best thing to
1132 do is to simply refuse to create a tty frame of type `eterm'.
1133
1134 (Fixed, changed emacsclient to check for TERM=eterm. The face
1135 complaints seem to be caused by bugs in term.el; they are not
1136 related to multi-tty.)
1137
1138 -- Find out the best way to support suspending Emacs with multiple
1139 ttys. My guess: disable it on the controlling tty, but from other
1140 ttys pass it on to emacsclient somehow. (It is (I hope) trivial to
1141 extend emacsclient to handle suspend/resume. A `kill -STOP' almost
1142 works right now.)
1143
1144 (Done. I needed to play with signal handling and the server
1145 protocol a bit to make emacsclient behave as a normal UNIX program
1146 wrt foreground/background process groups.)
1147
1148 -- There is a flicker during the startup of `emacs -nw'; it's as if
1149 the terminal is initialized, reset and then initialialized again.
1150 Debug this. (Hint: narrow_foreground_group is called twice during
1151 startup.)
1152
1153 (This is gone.)
1154
1155 -- Robert Chassell has found serious copy-paste bugs with the
1156 multi-tty branch. There seem to be redisplay bugs while copying
1157 from X to a terminal frame. Copying accented characters do not
1158 work for me.
1159
1160 (Patch-124 should fix this, by changing the interprogram-*-function
1161 variables to be frame-local, as suggested by Mark Plaksin
1162 (thanks!). I think that the redisplay bugs are in fact not bugs,
1163 but delays caused by single_kboard --> perhaps MULTI_KBOARD should
1164 be removed.)
1165
1166 -- frame-creation-function was removed, which might be a bad idea.
1167 Think up a compatible solution.
1168
1169 (It was an internal interface that may be changed when necessary.)
1170
1171 -- Change Lisp code not to (getenv "TERM"); use the `tty-type' frame
1172 parameter or the frame-tty-type function instead. (M-x tags-search
1173 "TERM" helps with this.) Update: Actually, all getenv invocations
1174 should be checked for multi-tty compatibility, and an interface
1175 must be implemented to get the remote client's environment.
1176
1177 (Done. Only getenv calls in lisp/term/*.el were changed; other
1178 calls should be mostly left as they are.)
1179
1180 -- Add an elaborate mechanism for display-local variables. (There are
1181 already a few of these; search for `terminal-local' in the Elisp
1182 manual.)
1183
1184 (Not needed. Display-local variables could be emulated by
1185 frame-local variables.)
1186
1187 -- Emacs assumes that all terminal frames have the same locale
1188 settings as Emacs itself. This may lead to bogus results in a
1189 multi-locale setup. (E.g., while logging in from a remote client
1190 with a different locale.)
1191 (Update after new bugreport by Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs:
1192 (at least) the structs terminal_coding and keyboard_coding in
1193 coding.c must be moved to struct display, and the Lisp interface
1194 [set-]keyboard-coding-system must be adapted for the change.)
1195
1196 (Fixed. Emacs now uses the locale settings as seen by the
1197 emacsclient process for server tty frames.)
1198 (Update: Not really; Vlocale_coding_system is still global.)
1199
1200 -- Make `struct display' accessible to Lisp programs. Accessor functions:
1201
1202 (displayp OBJECT): Returns t if OBJECT is a display.
1203 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1204
1205 (display-list): Returns list of currently active displays.
1206 => Implemented.
1207
1208 (selected-display): Returns the display object of the selected frame.
1209 => Not strictly necessary, but implemented anyway.
1210
1211 (frame-display FRAME): Returns the display object of FRAME.
1212 => Implemented.
1213
1214 (display-frames DISPLAY): Returns a list of frames on DISPLAY.
1215 => Already implemented, see frames-on-display-list.
1216
1217 (display-type DISPLAY): Returns the type of DISPLAY, as a
1218 symbol. (See `framep'.)
1219 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1220
1221 (display-device DISPLAY): Returns the name of the device that
1222 DISPLAY uses, as a string. (E.g: "/dev/pts/16", or
1223 ":0.0")
1224 => Implemented as display-name.
1225
1226 etc.
1227
1228 See next issue why this is necessary.
1229
1230 (Update: The consensus on emacs-devel seems to be to do this via
1231 integer identifiers. That's fine by me.)
1232
1233 (Done.)
1234
1235 -- The following needs to be supported:
1236
1237 $ emacsclient -t
1238 C-z
1239 $ emacsclient -t
1240 (This fails now.)
1241
1242 The cleanest way to solve this is to allow multiple displays on the
1243 same terminal device; each new emacsclient process should create
1244 its own display. As displays are currently identified by their
1245 device names, this is not possible until struct display becomes
1246 accessible as a Lisp-level object.
1247
1248 (Done.)
1249
1250 -- Miles Bader suggests that C-x C-c on an emacsclient frame should
1251 only close the frame, not exit the entire Emacs session. Update:
1252 see above for a function that does this. Maybe this should be the
1253 new default?
1254
1255 (Done. This is the new default. No complaints so far.)
1256
1257 -- Clean up the frame-local variable system. I think it's ugly and
1258 error-prone. But maybe I just haven't yet fully understood it.
1259
1260 (Nothing to do. It doesn't seem ugly any more. It's rather clever.)
1261
1262 -- Support multiple character locales. A version of
1263 `set-locale-environment' needs to be written for setting up
1264 display-local settings on ttys. I think calling
1265 set-display-table-and-terminal-coding-system and
1266 set-keyboard-coding-system would be enough. The language
1267 environment itself should remain a global setting.
1268
1269 (Done, by an ugly hack.)
1270
1271 -- The terminal customization files in term/*.el tend to change global
1272 parameters, which may confuse Emacs with multiple displays. Change
1273 them to tweak only frame-local settings, if possible. (They tend
1274 to call define-key to set function key sequences a lot.)
1275
1276 (Done, by making `function-key-map' terminal-local (i.e., part of
1277 struct kboard). This has probably covered all the remaining problems.)
1278
1279 -- Make `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' terminal-local.
1280
1281 (Done.)
1282
1283 -- Implement `terminal-local-value' and `set-terminal-local-value' to
1284 allow deterministic access to terminal local bindings. The
1285 encode-kb package can not set up `key-translation-map' without
1286 these. The terminal-local bindings seem to be independent of what
1287 frame is selected.
1288
1289 (Done.)
1290
1291 -- xt-mouse.el needs to be adapted for multi-tty. It currently
1292 signals an error on kill-emacs under X, which prevents the user
1293 from exiting Emacs. (Reported by Mnemonikk on freenode.)
1294
1295 (Done, I hope.)
1296
1297
1298 -- Having {reset,init}_all_sys_modes in set-input-mode breaks arrow
1299 keys on non-selected terminals under screen, and sometimes on other
1300 terminal types as well. The other function keys continue to work
1301 fine. Sometimes faces on these screens become garbled.
1302
1303 This only seems to affect displays that are of the same terminfo
1304 type as the selected one. Interestingly, in screen Emacs normally
1305 reports the up arrow key as `M-o A', but after the above SNAFU, it
1306 complains about `M-[ a'. UNIX ttys are a complete mystery to me,
1307 but it seems the reset-reinitialize cycle somehow leaves the
1308 non-selected terminals in a different state than usual. I have no
1309 idea how this could happen.
1310
1311 Currently set-input-mode resets only the currently selected
1312 terminal, which seems to somehow work around the problem.
1313
1314 Update:
1315
1316 Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:
1317 > Some terminals have 2 modes for cursor keys: Application Mode where
1318 > the cursor keys transmit the codes defined in the terminfo entry, and
1319 > Cursor mode. Applications have to send the smkx and rmkx terminfo
1320 > strings to switch between the 2 modes. So Emacs (and emacsclient) have
1321 > to send smkx when initializing and rmkx when quitting (or on
1322 > suspend).
1323
1324 (I think patch-370 fixed this.)
1325
1326 -- This long-standing bug (first reported by Han Boetes) seems to come
1327 and go all the time. It is time to track it down and fix it.
1328
1329 emacs
1330 M-x server-start
1331
1332 # From another xterm:
1333 emacsclient -e '(y-or-n-p "Do you want me to crash? ")'
1334 # Notice how the answer ends up in the *scratch* buffer
1335 M-x garbage-collect
1336 SIGSEGV
1337
1338 (Fixed in patch-414 after detailed analysis by Kalle Olavi Niemitalo.)
1339
1340 -- normal-erase-is-backspace-mode in simple.el needs to be updated for
1341 multi-tty (rep. by Dan Waber). (The Delete key is broken on X
1342 because of this.)
1343
1344 (Fixed in patch-427.)
1345
1346 -- I think keyboard-translate-table should be made terminal-local.
1347
1348 (Done in patch-431.)
1349
1350 -- The semantics of terminal-local variables are confusing; it is not
1351 clear what binding is in effect in any given time. See if
1352 current_kboard (or at least the terminal-local bindings exported to
1353 Lisp) might be changed to be tied to the selected frame instead.
1354 Currently, `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' may be
1355 accessed reliably only using the hackish
1356 `(set-)terminal-local-value' functions.
1357
1358 Perhaps there should be a difference between `last-command' &co.
1359 and these more conventional configuration variables.
1360 (E.g. `symbol-value' would use current_kboard to access
1361 `last-command', but SELECTED_FRAME()->display->kboard to get the
1362 value of `function-key-map'.
1363
1364 (Fixed in patch-434.)
1365
1366 -- If the first key pressed on a new tty terminal is a function key,
1367 it is not recognized correctly. May be related to the bug below.
1368
1369 (Seems to have been fixed as a side effect of patch-434. "The bug
1370 below" was the set-input-mode madness.)
1371
1372 (Update: this bug was fixed for good in patch-449. It was tracked
1373 down to a bug in `read_key_sequence': it failed to reinitialize its
1374 local function-key-map/key-translation-map references when it
1375 switched keyboards. I don't understand why did this bug only
1376 appear on brand new frames, though!)
1377
1378 -- Disable connecting to a new X display when we use the GTK toolkit.
1379
1380 (Disabled in patch-450.)
1381
1382 -- Implement automatic forwarding of client environment variables to
1383 forked processes, as discussed on the multi-tty list. Terminal
1384 parameters are now accessible in C code, so the biggest obstacle is
1385 gone. The `getenv_internal' and `child_setup' functions in
1386 callproc.c must be changed to support the following variable:
1387
1388 terminal-local-environment-variables is a variable defined in ...
1389
1390 Enable or disable terminal-local environment variables.
1391
1392 If set to t, `getenv', `setenv' and subprocess creation
1393 functions use the environment variables of the emacsclient
1394 process that created the selected frame, ignoring
1395 `process-environment'.
1396
1397 If set to nil, Emacs uses `process-environment' and ignores
1398 the client environment.
1399
1400 Otherwise, `terminal-local-environment-variables' should be a
1401 list of variable names (represented by Lisp strings) to look
1402 up in the client environment. The rest will come from
1403 `process-environment'.
1404
1405 (Implemented in patch-461; `terminal-getenv', `terminal-setenv' and
1406 `with-terminal-environment' are now replaced by extensions to
1407 `getenv' and `setenv', and the new `local-environment-variables'
1408 facility. Yay!)
1409
1410 (Updated in patch-465 to fix the semantics of let-binding
1411 `process-environment'. `process-environment' was changed to
1412 override all local/global environment variables, and a new variable
1413 `global-environment' was introduced to have `process-environment's
1414 old meaning.)
1415
1416 (Updated in patch-466 to fix the case when two emacsclient sessions
1417 share the same terminal, but have different environment. The local
1418 environment lists are now stored as frame parameters, so the
1419 C-level terminal parameters are not strictly necessary any more.)
1420
1421 -- `Fdelete_frame' is called from various critical places where it is
1422 not acceptable for the frame deletion to fail, e.g. from
1423 x_connection_closed after an X error. `Fdelete_frame' now protects
1424 against `delete-frame-functions' throwing an error and preventing a
1425 frame delete. (patch-475)
1426
1427 -- Fix set-input-mode for multi-tty. It's a truly horrible interface;
1428 what if we'd blow it up into several separate functions (with a
1429 compatibility definition)?
1430
1431 (Done. See `set-input-interrupt-mode', `set-output-flow-control',
1432 `set-input-meta-mode' and `set-quit-char'.) (patch-457)
1433
1434 -- Let-binding `overriding-terminal-local-map' on a brand new frame
1435 does not seem to work correctly. (See `fancy-splash-screens'.)
1436 The keymap seems to be set up right, but events go to another
1437 terminal. Or is it `unread-command-events' that gets Emacs
1438 confused? Investigate.
1439
1440 (Emacs was confused because a process filter entered
1441 `recursive-edit' while Emacs was reading input. I added support
1442 for this in the input system.) (patch-489)
1443
1444 -- I smell something funny around pop_kboard's "deleted kboard" case.
1445 Determine what are the circumstances of this case, and fix any
1446 bug that comes to light.
1447
1448 (It happens simply because single_kboard's terminal is sometimes
1449 deleted while executing a command on it, for example the one that
1450 kills the terminal. There was no bug here, but I rewrote the whole
1451 single_kboard mess anyway.) (patch-489)
1452
1453 -- Understand Emacs's low-level input system (it's black magic) :-)
1454 What exactly does interrupt_input do? I tried to disable it for
1455 raw secondary tty support, but it does not seem to do anything
1456 useful. (Update: Look again. X unconditionally enables this, maybe
1457 that's why raw terminal support is broken again. I really do need
1458 to understand input.)
1459 (Update: I am starting to understand the read_key_sequence->read-char
1460 ->kbd_buffer_get_event->read_avail_input->read_socket_hook path. Yay!)
1461
1462 (Update: OK, it all seems so easy now (NOT). Input could be done
1463 synchronously (with wait_reading_process_input), or asynchronously
1464 by SIGIO or polling (SIGALRM). C-g either sets the Vquit_flag,
1465 signals a 'quit condition (when immediate_quit), or throws to
1466 `getcjmp' when Emacs was waiting for input when the C-g event
1467 arrived.)
1468
1469 -- Replace wrong_kboard_jmpbuf with a special return value of
1470 read_char. It is absurd that we use setjmp/longjmp just to return
1471 to the immediate caller.
1472
1473 (Done in patch-500.)
1474
1475 ;;; arch-tag: 8da1619e-2e79-41a8-9ac9-a0485daad17d
1476