Make xt-mouse.el multi-tty-compatible.
[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 console.
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 ARISAWA Akihiro <ari at mbf dot ocn dot ne dot jp>
35 Vincent Bernat <bernat at luffy dot cx>
36 Han Boetes <han at mijncomputer dot nl>
37 Robert J. Chassell <bob at rattlesnake dot com>
38 Romain Francoise <romain at orebokech dot com>
39 Ami Fischman <ami at fischman dot org>
40 Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs <friedel at nomaden dot org>
41 IRIE Tetsuya <irie at t dot email dot ne dot jp>
42 Yoshiaki Kasahara <kasahara at nc dot kyushu-u dot ac dot jp>
43 Jurej Kubelka <Juraj dot Kubelka at email dot cz>
44 David Lichteblau <david at lichteblau dot com>
45 Xavier Mallard <zedek at gnu-rox dot org>
46 Istvan Marko <mi-mtty at kismala dot com>
47 Ted Morse <morse at ciholas dot com>
48 Dan Nicolaescu <dann at ics dot uci dot edu>
49 Gergely Nagy <algernon at debian dot org>
50 Mark Plaksin <happy at mcplaksin dot org>
51 Francisco Borges <borges at let dot rug dot nl>
52 Frank Ruell <stoerte at dreamwarrior dot net>
53 Dan Waber <dwaber at logolalia dot com>
54 and many others.
55
56 Richard Stallman was kind enough to review an earlier version of my
57 patches.
58
59
60 MAILING LISTS
61 -------------
62
63 The multi-tty mailing list (discussion & bug reports):
64
65 Address: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
66 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty
67 Archive: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.multi-tty/
68
69 Commit notifications (read-only):
70
71 Address: multi-tty-commits@lists.fnord.hu
72 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty-commits
73
74
75 STATUS
76 ------
77
78 The branch is now very stable and almost full-featured. All of the
79 major problems have been fixed, only a few minor issues remain. (It
80 still needs to be ported to Windows/Mac/DOS, though.) Both multiple
81 tty device support and simultaneous X and tty frame support works
82 fine. Emacsclient has been extended to support opening new tty and X
83 frames. It has been changed open new Emacs frames by default.
84
85 The multi-tty branch has been scheduled for inclusion in the next
86 major release of Emacs (version 23). I expect the merge into the
87 development trunk to occur sometime during next year (2005), after the
88 merge of the Unicode branch.
89
90 Tested on GNU/Linux, Solaris 8, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Please let me
91 know if you succeed or fail to use it on other platforms---I'll have a
92 few tricky test cases for you.
93
94 Known problems:
95
96 * GTK support. If you compile your Emacs with the GTK
97 toolkit, some functionality of multi-tty will be lost.
98 In particular, closing an X display causes a crash.
99 Current releases of GTK have limitations and bugs that
100 prevent full-blown multi-display support in Emacs. Use the
101 Lucid toolkit if you want to see a complete feature set.
102
103 * The single-kboard mode.
104
105 If your multi-tty Emacs session seems to be frozen, you
106 probably have a recursive editing session or a pending
107 minibuffer prompt (which is a kind of recursive editing) on
108 another display. To unfreeze your session, switch to that
109 display and complete the recursive edit, for example by
110 pressing C-] (`abort-recursive-edit').
111
112 I am sorry to say that currently there is no way to break
113 out of this "single-kboard mode" from a frozen display. If
114 you are unable to switch to the display that locks the
115 others (for example because it is on a remote computer),
116 then you can use emacsclient to break out of all recursive
117 editing sessions:
118
119 emacsclient -e '(top-level)'
120
121 Note that this (perhaps) unintuitive behaviour is by design.
122 Single-kboard mode is required because of an intrinsic Emacs
123 limitation that is very hard to eliminate. (This limitation
124 is related to the single-threaded nature of Emacs.)
125
126 I plan to implement better user notification and support for
127 breaking out of single-kboard mode from locked displays.
128
129 * Mac, Windows and DOS support is broken, doesn't even
130 compile. Multiple display support will probably not provide
131 new Emacs features on these systems, but the multi-tty
132 branch changed a few low-level interfaces, and the
133 system-dependent source files need to be adapted
134 accordingly. The changes are mostly trivial, so almost
135 anyone can help, if only by compiling the branch and
136 reporting the compiler errors. (It is not worth to do this
137 yet, though.)
138
139
140 HOW TO GET THE BRANCH
141 ---------------------
142
143 The branch uses GNU Arch (http://www.gnuarch.org) for version control.
144
145 Retrieving the latest version of the branch:
146
147 tla register-archive -f http://lorentey.hu/arch/2004/
148 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
149
150 This incantation uses my private archive mirror that is hosted on a
151 relatively low-bandwidth site; if you are outside Hungary, you will
152 probably want to you use my secondary mirror: (Note that the -f option
153 will overwrite the archive location if you have previously registered
154 the Hungarian one.)
155
156 tla register-archive -f http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/arch/2004
157 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
158
159 http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/arch/2004
160
161 The Arch supermirror provides mirroring services for all public Arch
162 repositories. We have a mirror there, too, if you prefer.
163
164 tla register-archive -f http://mirrors.sourcecontrol.net/lorentey%40elte.hu--2004
165 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
166
167 My GPG key id is 0FB27A3F; it is available from
168 hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net/, or from my homepage at
169 http://lorentey.hu/rolam/gpg.html)
170
171 Don't worry if the above checkout takes a few minutes to complete;
172 once you have a source tree, updating it to the latest revision will
173 be _much_ faster. Use the following command for the update:
174
175 tla replay
176
177 You can find more information about Arch on http://wiki.gnuarch.org/.
178 It's a wonderful source control system, I highly recommend it.
179
180 If you don't have tla, the branch has a homepage from which you can
181 download conventional patches against Emacs CVS HEAD:
182
183 http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.html
184
185 DEBIAN PACKAGES
186 ---------------
187
188 If you run Debian, or a distribution based on Debian, you are welcome
189 to use our binary packages; put these lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list:
190
191 # Multi-tty Emacs
192 deb http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt ./
193 deb-src http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt ./
194
195 Note that these packages are intended solely to provide an easy way to
196 test the new multi-tty features. They are not to be taken as Emacs
197 releases, and it's a mistake to expect robust operation or any kind of
198 timely support for them. Do not install them, unless you'd like to
199 have your editor crash on you.
200
201
202 COMPILATION
203 -----------
204
205 The multi-tty branch is compiled the same way as Emacs itself:
206
207 make maintainer-clean # (If you have compiled Emacs before)
208
209 ./configure <your favourite options>
210 make bootstrap
211 make install
212
213 If you have strange compilation errors, they may be caused by old
214 *.elc files that are left over from an earlier bootstrap. The `make
215 maintainer-clean' target deletes them, so it is a good idea to run
216 that before reporting a bug. (Emacs requires a clean recompilation
217 after certain kinds of source code changes.)
218
219 TESTING
220 -------
221
222 To test the multi-tty branch, start up the Emacs server with the
223 following commands:
224
225 emacs
226 M-x server-start
227
228 and then (from a shell prompt on another terminal) start emacsclient
229 with
230 emacsclient -t /optional/file/names... (for a tty frame)
231 emacsclient /optional/file/names... (for an X frame)
232
233 (Make sure both emacs and emacsclient are multi-tty versions.)
234 You'll hopefully have two fully working, independent frames on
235 separate terminals. The new frame is closed automatically when you
236 finish editing the specified files (C-x #), but delete-frame (C-x 5 0)
237 also works. Of course, you can create frames on more than two tty
238 devices.
239
240 Creating new frames on the same tty with C-x 5 2 works, and they
241 behave the same way as in previous Emacs versions. If you exit emacs,
242 all terminals should be restored to their previous states.
243
244 This is work in progress, and probably full of bugs. It is a good
245 idea to run emacs from gdb, so that you'll have a live instance to
246 debug if something goes wrong. Please send me your bug reports on our
247 mailing list: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
248
249 TIPS & TRICKS
250 -------------
251
252 I think the best way to use the new Emacs is to have it running inside
253 a disconnected GNU screen session, and always use emacsclient for
254 normal work. One advantage of this is that not a single keystroke of
255 your work will be lost if the display device that you are using
256 crashes, or the network connection times out, or whatever. (I had an
257 extremely unstable X server for some time while I was developing these
258 patches, and running Emacs this way has saved me a number of M-x
259 recover-session invocations.)
260
261 I use the following two bash scripts to handle my Emacs sessions:
262
263 -------------------------------------------------------connect-emacs--
264 #!/bin/bash
265 # Usage: connect-emacs <name> <args>...
266 #
267 # Connects to the Emacs instance called NAME. Starts up the instance
268 # if it is not already running. The rest of the arguments are passed
269 # to emacsclient.
270
271 name="$1"
272 shift
273
274 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
275 echo "Usage: connect_emacs <name> <args>..." >&2
276 exit 1
277 fi
278 preload-emacs "$name" wait
279 /usr/bin/emacsclient.emacs-multi-tty -s "$name" "$@"
280 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
281
282 -------------------------------------------------------preload-emacs--
283 #!/bin/bash
284 # Usage: preload-emacs <name> [<waitp>]
285 #
286 # Preloads the Emacs instance called NAME in a detached screen
287 # session. Does nothing if the instance is already running. If WAITP
288 # is non-empty, the function waits until the server starts up and
289 # creates its socket; otherwise it returns immediately.
290
291 name="$1"
292 waitp="$2"
293 screendir="/var/run/screen/S-$USER"
294 serverdir="/tmp/emacs$UID"
295 emacs=/usr/bin/emacs-multi-tty # Or wherever you installed your multi-tty Emacs
296
297 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
298 echo "Usage: preload_emacs <name> [<waitp>]" >&2
299 exit 1
300 fi
301
302 if [ ! -e "$screendir"/*."$name" ]; then
303 if [ -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; then
304 # Delete leftover socket (for the wait option)
305 rm "$serverdir/$name"
306 fi
307 screen -dmS "$name" "$emacs" -nw --eval "(setq server-name \"$name\")" -f server-start
308 fi
309 if [ ! -z "$waitp" ]; then
310 while [ ! -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; do sleep 0.1; done
311 fi
312 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
313
314 I have the following in my profile to have two instances automatically
315 preloaded for editing and email:
316
317 preload-emacs editor
318 preload-emacs gnus
319
320 It is useful to set up short aliases for connect-emacs. I use the
321 following:
322
323 alias edit="connect-emacs editor"
324 alias e=edit
325 alias et="connect-emacs editor -t"
326 alias gnus="connect-emacs gnus"
327
328
329 CHANGELOG
330 ---------
331
332 See arch logs.
333
334
335 NEWS
336 ----
337
338 For the NEWS file: (Needs much, much work)
339
340 ** Support for multiple terminal devices has been added.
341
342 *** You can specify a terminal device (`tty' parameter) and a terminal
343 type (`tty-type' parameter) to `make-terminal-frame'.
344
345 *** You can test for the presence of multiple terminal support by
346 testing for the `multi-tty' feature.
347
348 *** Emacsclient has been extended to support opening a new terminal
349 frame. Its behaviour has been changed to open a new Emacs frame by
350 default. Use the -c option to get the old behavior of opening
351 files in the currently selected Emacs frame.
352
353 *** A make-frame-on-tty function has been added to make it easier to
354 create frames on new terminals.
355
356 *** New functions: frame-tty-name, frame-tty-type, delete-tty,
357 terminal-local-value, set-terminal-local-value
358
359 terminal-id, terminal-parameters, terminal-parameter,
360 set-terminal-parameter
361
362 *** New variables: global-key-translation-map
363
364 *** The keymaps key-translation-map and function-key-map are now
365 terminal-local.
366
367 ** Support for simultaneous graphical and terminal frames has been
368 added.
369
370 *** The function `make-frame-on-display' now works during a terminal
371 session, and `make-frame-on-tty' works during a graphical session.
372
373 *** The `window-system' variable has been made frame-local.
374
375 *** The new `initial-window-system' variable contains the
376 `window-system' value for the first frame.
377
378 *** talk.el has been extended for multiple tty support.
379
380
381 * * *
382
383 (The rest of this file consists of my development notes and as such it
384 is probably not very interesting for anyone else.)
385
386 THINGS TO DO
387 ------------
388
389 ** This long-standing bug (first reported by Han Boetes) seems to come
390 and go all the time. It is time to track it down and fix it.
391
392 emacs
393 M-x server-start
394
395 # From another xterm:
396 emacsclient -e '(y-or-n-p "Do you want me to crash? ")'
397 # Notice how the answer ends up in the *scratch* buffer
398 M-x garbage-collect
399 SIGSEGV
400
401 ** frames-on-display-list should also accept frames.
402
403 ** Consider the `tty-type' frame parameter and the `display-tty-type'
404 function. They serve the exact same purpose. I think it may be
405 a good idea to eliminate one of them, preferably `tty-type'.
406
407 ** The handling of lisp/term/*.el, and frame creation in general, is a
408 big, big mess. How come the terminal-specific file is loaded by
409 tty-create-frame-with-faces? I don't think it is necessary to load
410 these files for each frame; once per terminal should be enough.
411 Update: lisp/term/*.el is not loaded repeatedly anymore, but
412 faces.el still needs to be cleaned up.
413
414 ** Fix frame-set-background-mode in this branch. It was recently
415 changed in CVS, and frame.el in multi-tty has not yet been adapted
416 for the changes. (It needs to look at
417 default-frame-background-mode.) (Update: maybe it is fixed now;
418 needs testing.)
419
420 ** I think `(set-)terminal-local-value' and the terminal parameter
421 mechanism should be integrated into a single framework.
422
423 ** Add the following hooks: after-delete-frame-hook (for server.el,
424 instead of delete-frame-functions),
425 after-delete-terminal-functions, after-create-terminal-functions.
426
427 ** If the first key pressed on a new tty terminal is a function key,
428 it is not recognized correctly. May be related to the bug below.
429
430 ** Having {reset,init}_all_sys_modes in set-input-mode breaks arrow
431 keys on non-selected terminals under screen, and sometimes on other
432 terminal types as well. The other function keys continue to work
433 fine. Sometimes faces on these screens become garbled.
434
435 This only seems to affect displays that are of the same terminfo
436 type as the selected one. Interestingly, in screen Emacs normally
437 reports the up arrow key as `M-o A', but after the above SNAFU, it
438 complains about `M-[ a'. UNIX ttys are a complete mystery to me,
439 but it seems the reset-reinitialize cycle somehow leaves the
440 non-selected terminals in a different state than usual. I have no
441 idea how this could happen.
442
443 Currently set-input-mode resets only the currently selected
444 terminal, which seems to somehow work around the problem.
445
446 ** Fix set-input-mode for multi-tty. It's a truly horrible interface;
447 what if we'd blow it up into several separate functions (with a
448 compatibility definition)?
449
450 ** BULK RENAME: The `display-' prefix of new Lisp-level functions
451 conflicts with stuff like `display-time-mode'. Use `device-'
452 or `terminal-' instead. I think I prefer `terminal-'.
453
454 It turns out that most of the offending Lisp functions were defined
455 in the trunk. Therefore, compatibility aliases should be defined
456 for the following names:
457
458 display-color-cells terminal-color-cells
459 display-color-p terminal-color-p
460 display-graphic-p terminal-graphic-p
461 display-grayscale-p terminal-grayscale-p
462 display-images-p terminal-images-p
463 display-mm-height terminal-mm-height
464 display-mm-width terminal-mm-width
465 display-mouse-p terminal-mouse-p
466 display-multi-font-p terminal-multi-font-p
467 display-multi-frame-p terminal-multi-frame-p
468 display-pixel-height terminal-pixel-height
469 display-pixel-width terminal-pixel-width
470 display-pixels-per-inch terminal-pixels-per-inch
471 display-planes terminal-planes
472 display-popup-menus-p terminal-popup-menus-p
473 display-save-under terminal-save-under
474 display-screens terminal-screens
475 display-supports-face-attributes-p terminal-supports-face-attributes-p
476 display-visual-class terminal-visual-class
477 framep-on-display framep-on-terminal
478 frames-on-display-list frames-on-terminal-list
479
480 The following functions were introduced in the multi-tty branch, and
481 can be renamed without aliases:
482
483 display-controlling-tty-p terminal-controlling-tty-p
484 display-list terminal-list
485 display-live-p terminal-live-p
486 display-name terminal-name
487 display-tty-type terminal-tty-type
488 frame-display terminal-of-frame
489 delete-display delete-terminal
490
491 ** The semantics of terminal-local variables are confusing; it is not
492 clear what binding is in effect in any given time. See if
493 current_kboard (or at least the terminal-local bindings exported to
494 Lisp) might be changed to be tied to the selected frame instead.
495 Currently, `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' may be
496 accessed reliably only using the hackish
497 `(set-)terminal-local-value' functions.
498
499 Perhaps there should be a difference between `last-command' &co.
500 and these more conventional configuration variables.
501 (E.g. `symbol-value' would use current_kboard to access
502 `last-command', but SELECTED_FRAME()->display->kboard to get the
503 value of `function-key-map'.
504
505 ** The single-keyboard mode of MULTI_KBOARD is extremely confusing
506 sometimes; Emacs does not respond to stimuli from other keyboards.
507 At least a beep or a message would be important, if the single-mode
508 is still required to prevent interference. (Reported by Dan
509 Nicolaescu.)
510
511 Update: selecting a region with the mouse enables single_kboard
512 under X. This is very confusing.
513
514 Update: After discussions with Richard Stallman, this will be
515 resolved by having locked displays warn the user to wait, and
516 introducing a complex protocol to remotely bail out of
517 single-kboard mode by pressing C-g.
518
519 Update: Warning the user is not trivial to implement, as Emacs has
520 only one echo area, shared by all frames. Ideally the warning
521 should not be displayed on the display that is locking the others.
522 Perhaps the high probability of user confusion caused by
523 single_kboard mode deserves a special case in the display code.
524 Alternatively, it might be good enough to signal single_kboard mode
525 by changing the modelines or some other frame-local display element
526 on the locked out displays.
527
528 ** The session management module is prone to crashes when the X
529 connection is closed and then later I try to connect to a new X
530 session:
531
532 #0 0xb7ebc806 in SmcGetIceConnection () from /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6
533 #1 0x080e6641 in x_session_check_input (bufp=0xbf86c9c0) at xsmfns.c:144
534 #2 0x080d3bbc in XTread_socket (device=0xa722ff8, expected=1, hold_quit=0xbf86ca90) at xterm.c:7037
535 #3 0x080fa404 in read_avail_input (expected=1) at keyboard.c:6696
536 #4 0x080fa4ca in handle_async_input () at keyboard.c:6900
537 #5 0x080d51fa in x_term_init (display_name=162628899, xrm_option=0x0, resource_name=0x857068c "emacs") at xterm.c:10622
538 #6 0x080d920e in x_display_info_for_name (name=162628899) at xfns.c:3975
539 #7 0x080d92f9 in check_x_display_info (object=1) at xfns.c:274
540 #8 0x080d97b8 in Fx_create_frame (parms=151221485) at xfns.c:3016
541 #9 0x0815bf72 in Ffuncall (nargs=2, args=0xbf86ceec) at eval.c:2851
542
543 I installed a workaround to prevent this. The X session manager is
544 only contacted when the very first display in the Emacs session is
545 an X display. Also, x_delete_display() on this display aborts
546 session management, and XTread_socket only calls
547 x_session_check_input when it is called for the display that the
548 session was opened on. While this does not really fix the bug, it
549 makes it much less frequent, because session manager support will
550 not normally be enabled when Emacs can survive the shutdown of the
551 X server.
552
553 See if xsmfns.c should be updated.
554
555 ** normal-erase-is-backspace-mode in simple.el needs to be updated for
556 multi-tty (rep. by Dan Waber).
557
558 ** Hunt down display-related functions in frame.el and extend them all
559 to accept display ids.
560
561 ** rif->flush_display_optional (NULL) calls should be replaced by a
562 new global function.
563
564 ** The set-locale-environment hack (adding the DISPLAY option) should
565 be replaced with a clean design.
566
567 ** standard-display-table should be display-local.
568 standard-display-european should be display-local.
569
570 ** With iswitchb-default-method set to 'always-frame, only frames on
571 the current display should be considered. This might involve
572 extending `get-buffer-window'.
573
574 ** Have a look at Vlocale_coding_system. Seems like it would be a
575 tedious job to localize it, although most references use it for
576 interfacing with libc and are therefore OK with the global
577 definition.
578
579 Exceptions found so far: x-select-text and
580 x-cut-buffer-or-selection-value.
581
582 ** Have a look at fatal_error_hook.
583
584 ** Have a look at set_frame_matrix_frame.
585
586 ** Check if we got term-setup-hook right.
587
588 ** I think tip_frame should be display-local.
589
590 ** Check display reference count handling in x_create_tip_frame.
591
592 ** make-frame does not correctly handle extra parameters in its
593 argument:
594
595 (frame-parameter (make-frame (list (cons 'foobar 42))) 'foobar)
596 => nil
597
598 (This is likely an error in the CVS trunk.)
599
600 ** Dan Nicolaescu suggests that -nw should be added as an alias for -t
601 in emacsclient. Good idea. (Alas, implementing this is not
602 trivial, getopt_long does not seem to support two-letter ``short''
603 options. Patches are welcome.) :-)
604
605 ** Mark Plaksin suggests that emacsclient should accept the same
606 X-related command-line arguments as Emacs. Most of the X-related
607 argument-handling is done in Lisp, so this should be quite easy to
608 implement.
609
610 ** Gergely Nagy suggests that C-x # should only kill the current
611 frame, not any other emacsclient frame that may have the same file
612 opened for editing. I think I agree with him.
613
614 ** Very strange bug: visible-bell does not work on secondary
615 terminals in xterm and konsole. The screen does flicker a bit,
616 but it's so quick it isn't noticable.
617
618 ** Move baud_rate to struct display.
619
620 ** Implement support for starting an interactive Emacs session without
621 an initial frame. (The user would connect to it and open frames
622 later, with emacsclient.)
623
624 ** Fix Mac support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
625 current state of Mac-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
626 are not useful; before starting work on Mac support, revert to
627 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
628
629 ** Fix W32 support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
630 current state of W32-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
631 are not useful; before starting work on W32 support, revert to
632 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
633
634 ** Fix DOS support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
635 current state of DOS-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
636 are not useful; before starting work on DOS support, revert to
637 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
638
639 ** Do a grep on XXX and ?? for more issues.
640
641 ** Understand Emacs's low-level input system (it's black magic) :-)
642 What exactly does interrupt_input do? I tried to disable it for
643 raw secondary tty support, but it does not seem to do anything
644 useful. (Update: Look again. X unconditionally enables this, maybe
645 that's why raw terminal support is broken again. I really do need
646 to understand input.)
647
648 ** Fix stuff_char for multi-tty. Doesn't seem to be of high priority.
649
650 DIARY OF CHANGES
651 ----------------
652
653 (ex-TODO items with explanations.)
654
655 -- Introduce a new struct for terminal devices.
656
657 (Done, see struct tty_output. The list of members is not yet
658 complete.)
659
660 -- Change the bootstrap procedure to initialize tty_list.
661
662 (Done, but needs review.)
663
664 -- Change make-terminal-frame to support specifying another tty.
665
666 (Done, new frame parameters: `tty' and `tty-type'.)
667
668 -- Implement support for reading from multiple terminals.
669
670 (Done, read_avail_input tries to read from each terminal, until one
671 succeeds. MULTI_KBOARD is not used. Secondary terminals don't send
672 SIGIO!)
673
674 (Update: They do, now.)
675
676 (Update2: After enabling X, they don't.)
677
678 -- other-frame should cycle through the frames on the `current'
679 terminal only.
680
681 (Done, by trivially modifiying next_frame and prev_frame.)
682
683 -- Support different terminal sizes.
684
685 (Done, no problem.)
686
687 -- Make sure terminal resizes are handled gracefully. (Could be
688 problematic.)
689
690 (Done. We don't get automatic SIGWINCH for additional ttys,
691 though.)
692
693 -- Extend emacsclient to automatically open a new tty when it connects
694 to Emacs.
695
696 (Done. It's an ugly hack, needs more work.)
697
698 -- Redisplay must refresh the topmost frame on *all* terminals, not
699 just the initial terminal.
700
701 (Done, but introduced an ugly redisplay problems. Ugh.)
702
703 -- Fix redisplay problems.
704
705 (Done; it turned out that the entire Wcm structure must be moved
706 inside tty_output. Why didn't I catch this earlier?)
707
708 -- Provide a way for emacsclient to tell Emacs that the tty has been
709 resized.
710
711 (Done, simply forward the SIGWINCH signal.)
712
713 -- Each keypress should automatically select the frame corresponding
714 to the terminal that it was coming from. This means that Emacs
715 must know from which terminal the last keyboard event came from.
716
717 (Done, it was quite simple, the input event system already
718 supported multiple frames.)
719
720 -- Fix SIGIO issue with secondary terminals.
721
722 (Done, emacsclient signals Emacs after writing to the proxy pseudo
723 terminal. Note that this means that multi-tty does not work with
724 raw ttys!)
725
726 (Update: This is bullshit. There is a read_input_waiting function,
727 extend that somehow.)
728
729 (Update of update: The first update was not right either, extending
730 read_input_waiting was not necessary. Secondary ttys do seem to
731 send signals on input.)
732
733 (Update^3: Not any more.)
734
735 -- Make make-terminal-frame look up the `tty' and `tty-type' frame
736 parameters from the currently selected terminal before the global
737 default.
738
739 (Done.)
740
741 -- Put all cached terminal escape sequences into struct tty_output.
742 Currently, they are still stored in global variables, so we don't
743 really support multiple terminal types.
744
745 (Done. It was not fun.)
746
747 -- Implement sane error handling after initialization. (Currently
748 emacs exits if you specify a bad terminal type.) The helpful error
749 messages must still be provided when Emacs starts.
750
751 (Done.)
752
753 -- Implement terminal deletion, i.e., deleting local frames, closing
754 the tty device and restoring its previous state without exiting
755 Emacs.
756
757 (Done, but at the moment only called when an error happens during
758 initialization. There is a memory corruption error around this
759 somewhere.) (Update: now it is fully enabled.)
760
761 -- Implement automatic deletion of terminals when the last frame on
762 that terminal is closed.
763
764 (Done.)
765
766 -- Restore tty screen after closing the terminal.
767
768 (Done, we do the same as Emacs 21.2 for all terminals.)
769
770 -- 'TERM=dumb src/emacs' does not restore the terminal state.
771
772 (Done.)
773
774 -- C-g should work on secondary terminals.
775
776 (Done, but the binding is not configurable.)
777
778 -- Deal with SIGHUP in Emacs and in emacsclient. (After this, the
779 server-frames may be removed from server.el.)
780
781 (Done, nothing to do. It seems that Emacs does not receive SIGHUP
782 from secondary ttys, which is actually a good thing.) (Update: I
783 think it would be a bad idea to remove server-frames.)
784
785 -- Change emacsclient/server.el to support the -t argument better,
786 i.e. automatically close the socket when the frame is closed.
787
788 (Seems to be working OK.)
789
790 -- Fix mysterious memory corruption error with tty deletion. To
791 trigger it, try the following shell command:
792
793 while true; do TERM=no-such-terminal-definition emacsclient -h; done
794
795 Emacs usually dumps core after a few dozen iterations. (The bug
796 seems to be related to the xfreeing or bzeroing of
797 tty_output.Wcm. Maybe there are outside references to struct Wcm?
798 Why were these vars collected into a struct before multi-tty
799 support?)
800
801 (Done. Whew. It turned out that the problem had nothing to do
802 with hypothetical external references to Wcm, or any other
803 tty_output component; it was simply that delete_tty closed the
804 filehandles of secondary ttys twice, resulting in fclose doubly
805 freeing memory. Utterly trivial matter. I love the C's memory
806 management, it puts hair on your chest.)
807
808 -- Support raw secondary terminals. (Note that SIGIO works only on
809 the controlling terminal.) Hint: extend read_input_waiting for
810 multiple ttys and hopefully this will be fixed.
811
812 (Done, it seems to have been working already for some time. It
813 seems F_SETOWN does work, after all. Not sure what made it fail
814 earlier, but it seems to be fixed (there were several changes
815 around request_sigio, maybe one of them did it).
816 read_input_waiting is only used in sys_select, don't change
817 it.) (Update: After adding X support, it's broken again.)
818 (Update^2: No it isn't.) :-)
819
820 -- Find out why does Emacs abort when it wants to close its
821 controlling tty. Hint: chan_process[] array. Hey, maybe
822 noninterrupt-IO would work, too? Update: no, there is no process
823 for stdin/out.
824
825 (Done. Added add/delete_keyboard_wait_descriptor to
826 term_init/delete_tty. The hint was right, in a way.)
827
828 -- Issue with SIGIO: it needs to be disabled during redisplay. See if
829 fcntl kernel behaviour could be emulated by emacsclient.
830
831 (Done. Simply disabled the SIGIO emulation hack in emacsclient.)
832 (Update: it was added back.) (Update^2: and removed again.)
833
834 -- server.el: There are issues with saving files in buffers of closed
835 clients. Try editing a file with emacsclient -f, and (without
836 saving it) do a delete-frame. The frame is closed without
837 question, and a surprising confirmation prompt appears in another
838 frame.
839
840 (Done. delete-frame now asks for confirmation if it still has
841 pending buffers, and modified buffers don't seem to be deleted.)
842
843 -- emacsclient.el, server.el: Handle eval or file open errors when
844 doing -t.
845
846 (Done.)
847
848 -- Make parts of struct tty_output accessible from Lisp. The device
849 name and the type is sufficient.
850
851 (Done, see frame-tty-name and frame-tty-type.)
852
853 -- Export delete_tty to the Lisp environment, for emacsclient.
854
855 (Done, see delete-tty.)
856
857 -- Get rid of the accessor macros in termchar.h, or define macros for
858 all members.
859
860 (Done.)
861
862 -- Move device-specific parameters (like costs) commonly used by
863 device backends to a common, device-dependent structure.
864
865 (Done. See struct display_method in termhooks.h.)
866
867 -- Fix X support.
868
869 (Done. Well, it seems to be working.)
870
871 -- Allow simultaneous X and tty frames. (Handling input could be
872 tricky. Or maybe not.)
873
874 (Done. Allowed, that is. It is currently extremely unstable, to
875 the point of being unusable. The rif variable causes constant
876 core dumps. Handling input is indeed tricky.)
877
878 -- Rewrite multi-tty input in terms of MULTI_KBOARD.
879
880 (Done. In fact, there was no need to rewrite anything, I just
881 added a kboard member to tty_display_info, and initialized the
882 frame's kboard from there.)
883
884 -- Fix rif issue with X-tty combo sessions. IMHO the best thing to do
885 is to get rid of that global variable (and use the value value in
886 display_method, which is guaranteed to be correct).
887
888 (Done, did exactly that. Core dumps during combo sessions became
889 much rarer. In fact, I have not yet met a single one.)
890
891 -- Add multi-tty support to talk.el.
892
893 (Done.)
894
895 -- Clean up the source of emacsclient. It is a mess.
896
897 (Done, eliminated stupid proxy-pty kludge.)
898
899 -- Fix faces on tty frames during X-tty combo sessions. There is an
900 init_frame_faces call in init_sys_modes, see if there is a problem
901 with it.
902
903 (Done, there was a stupid mistake in
904 Ftty_supports_face_attributes_p. Colors are broken, though.)
905
906 -- C-x 5 2, C-x 5 o, C-x 5 0 on an emacsclient frame unexpectedly
907 exits emacsclient. This is a result of trying to be clever with
908 delete-frame-functions.
909
910 (Fixed, added delete-tty-after-functions, and changed server.el to
911 use it.)
912
913 -- Something with (maybe) multi-keyboard support broke function keys
914 and arrows on ttys during X+tty combo sessions. Debug this.
915
916 (I can't reproduce it, maybe the terminal type was wrong.)
917
918 -- Fix input from raw ttys (again).
919
920 (Now it seems to work all right.)
921
922 -- During an X-tty combo session, a (message "Hello") from a tty frame
923 goes to the X frame. Fix this.
924
925 (Done. There was a safeguard against writing to the initial
926 terminal frame during bootstrap which prevented echo_area_display
927 from working correctly on a tty frame during a combo session.)
928
929 -- If there are no frames on its controlling terminal, Emacs should
930 exit if the user presses C-c there.
931
932 (Done, as far as possible. See the SIGTERM comment in
933 interrupt_signal on why this seems to be impossible to solve this
934 in general.)
935
936 -- During an X session, Emacs seems to read from stdin. Also, Emacs
937 fails to start without a controlling tty.
938
939 (Fixed by replacing the troublesome termcap display with a dummy
940 bootstrap display during bootstrap.
941
942 -- Do tty output through struct display, like graphical display
943 backends.
944
945 (Done.)
946
947 -- Define an output_initial value for output_method for the initial
948 frame that is dumped with Emacs. Checking for this frame (e.g. in
949 cmd_error_internal) is ugly.
950
951 (Done, broking interactive temacs.)
952
953 -- The command `emacsclient -t -e '(delete-frame)'' fails to exit.
954
955 (Fixed.)
956
957 -- frame-creation-function should always create a frame that is on the
958 same display as the selected frame. Maybe frame-creation-function
959 should simply be removed and make-frame changed to do the right
960 thing.
961
962 (Done, with a nice hack. frame-creation-function is now frame-local.)
963
964 -- Fix C-g on raw ttys.
965
966 (Done. I disabled the interrupt/quit keys on all secondary
967 terminals, so Emacs sees C-g as normal input. This looks like an
968 overkill, because emacsclient has extra code to pass SIGINT to
969 Emacs, so C-g should remain the interrupt/quit key on emacsclient
970 frames. See the next entry why implementing this distinction would
971 be a bad idea.)
972
973 -- Make sure C-g goes to the right frame with ttys. This is hard, as
974 SIGINT doesn't have a tty parameter. :-(
975
976 (Done, the previous change fixes this as a pleasant side effect.)
977
978 -- I have seen a case when Emacs with multiple ttys fell into a loop
979 eating 100% of CPU time. Strace showed this loop:
980
981 getpid() = 30284
982 kill(30284, SIGIO) = 0
983 --- SIGIO (I/O possible) @ 0 (0) ---
984 ioctl(6, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
985 ioctl(5, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
986 ioctl(0, FIONREAD, [0]) = 0
987 sigreturn() = ? (mask now [])
988 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747760}, NULL) = 0
989 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747806}, NULL) = 0
990 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
991 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
992 gettimeofday({1072842297, 748245}, NULL) = 0
993
994 I have seen something similar with a single X frame, but have not
995 been able to reproduce it for debugging.
996
997 Update: This may have been caused by checking for nread != 0
998 instead of nread > 0 after calling read_socket_hook in
999 read_avail_input.
1000
1001 (Fixed. This was caused by unconditionally including stdin in
1002 input_wait_mask in init_process. The select call in
1003 wait_reading_process_input always returned immediately, indicating
1004 that there is pending input from stdin, which nobody read.
1005
1006 Note that the above strace output seems to be an unrelated but
1007 similar bug. I think that is now fixed.)
1008
1009 -- Exiting Emacs while there are emacsclient frames doesn't restore the
1010 ttys to their default states.
1011
1012 (This seems to be fixed by some previous change.)
1013
1014 -- Allow opening an X session after -nw.
1015
1016 (Done.)
1017
1018 -- Fix color handling during tty+X combo sessions. (It seems that tty
1019 sessions automatically convert the face colors to terminal colors
1020 when the face is loaded. This conversion must happen instead on
1021 the fly in write_glyphs, which might be problematic, as color
1022 approximation is currently done in lisp (term/tty-colors.el).)
1023 (Update: hm, colors seem to work fine if I start emacs with -nw and
1024 then create an X frame. Maybe it's just a small buglet somewhere.)
1025
1026 (Seems to be fixed. The problem was in startup.el, it did not
1027 initialize tty colors when the initial window system was
1028 graphical.)
1029
1030 -- emacs -nw --eval '(y-or-n-p "Foobar")' segfaults. (Reported by
1031 Romain Francoise)
1032
1033 (Fixed, there was a keyboard initialization problem.)
1034
1035 -- Fix interactive use of temacs. There are face-related SEGVs, most
1036 likely because of changes in realize_default_face, realize_face.
1037
1038 (Fixed.)
1039
1040 -- Don't exit Emacs when the last X connection fails during a
1041 multi-display session.
1042
1043 (Fixed.)
1044
1045 -- Dan Nicolaescu noticed that starting emacsclient on the same
1046 terminal device that is the controlling tty of the Emacs process
1047 gives unexpected results.
1048
1049 (Fixed.)
1050
1051 -- Istvan Marko reported that Emacs hang on ttys if it was started
1052 from a shell script.
1053
1054 (Fixed. There was a bug in the multi-tty version of
1055 narrow_foreground_group. tcsetpgrp blocks if it is called from a
1056 process that is not in the same process group as the tty.)
1057
1058 -- emacsclient -t from an Emacs term buffer does not work, complains
1059 about face problems. This can even lock up Emacs (if the recursive
1060 frame sets single_kboard). Update: the face problems are caused by
1061 bugs in term.el, not in multi-tty. The lockup is caused by
1062 single_kboard mode, and is not easily resolvable. The best thing to
1063 do is to simply refuse to create a tty frame of type `eterm'.
1064
1065 (Fixed, changed emacsclient to check for TERM=eterm. The face
1066 complaints seem to be caused by bugs in term.el; they are not
1067 related to multi-tty.)
1068
1069 -- Find out the best way to support suspending Emacs with multiple
1070 ttys. My guess: disable it on the controlling tty, but from other
1071 ttys pass it on to emacsclient somehow. (It is (I hope) trivial to
1072 extend emacsclient to handle suspend/resume. A `kill -STOP' almost
1073 works right now.)
1074
1075 (Done. I needed to play with signal handling and the server
1076 protocol a bit to make emacsclient behave as a normal UNIX program
1077 wrt foreground/background process groups.)
1078
1079 -- There is a flicker during the startup of `emacs -nw'; it's as if
1080 the terminal is initialized, reset and then initialialized again.
1081 Debug this. (Hint: narrow_foreground_group is called twice during
1082 startup.)
1083
1084 (This is gone.)
1085
1086 -- Robert Chassell has found serious copy-paste bugs with the
1087 multi-tty branch. There seem to be redisplay bugs while copying
1088 from X to a terminal frame. Copying accented characters do not
1089 work for me.
1090
1091 (Patch-124 should fix this, by changing the interprogram-*-function
1092 variables to be frame-local, as suggested by Mark Plaksin
1093 (thanks!). I think that the redisplay bugs are in fact not bugs,
1094 but delays caused by single_kboard --> perhaps MULTI_KBOARD should
1095 be removed.)
1096
1097 -- frame-creation-function was removed, which might be a bad idea.
1098 Think up a compatible solution.
1099
1100 (It was an internal interface that may be changed when necessary.)
1101
1102 -- Change Lisp code not to (getenv "TERM"); use the `tty-type' frame
1103 parameter or the frame-tty-type function instead. (M-x tags-search
1104 "TERM" helps with this.) Update: Actually, all getenv invocations
1105 should be checked for multi-tty compatibility, and an interface
1106 must be implemented to get the remote client's environment.
1107
1108 (Done. Only getenv calls in lisp/term/*.el were changed; other
1109 calls should be mostly left as they are.)
1110
1111 -- Add an elaborate mechanism for display-local variables. (There are
1112 already a few of these; search for `terminal-local' in the Elisp
1113 manual.)
1114
1115 (Not needed. Display-local variables could be emulated by
1116 frame-local variables.)
1117
1118 -- Emacs assumes that all terminal frames have the same locale
1119 settings as Emacs itself. This may lead to bogus results in a
1120 multi-locale setup. (E.g., while logging in from a remote client
1121 with a different locale.)
1122 (Update after new bugreport by Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs:
1123 (at least) the structs terminal_coding and keyboard_coding in
1124 coding.c must be moved to struct display, and the Lisp interface
1125 [set-]keyboard-coding-system must be adapted for the change.)
1126
1127 (Fixed. Emacs now uses the locale settings as seen by the
1128 emacsclient process for server tty frames.)
1129 (Update: Not really; Vlocale_coding_system is still global.)
1130
1131 -- Make `struct display' accessible to Lisp programs. Accessor functions:
1132
1133 (displayp OBJECT): Returns t if OBJECT is a display.
1134 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1135
1136 (display-list): Returns list of currently active displays.
1137 => Implemented.
1138
1139 (selected-display): Returns the display object of the selected frame.
1140 => Not strictly necessary, but implemented anyway.
1141
1142 (frame-display FRAME): Returns the display object of FRAME.
1143 => Implemented.
1144
1145 (display-frames DISPLAY): Returns a list of frames on DISPLAY.
1146 => Already implemented, see frames-on-display-list.
1147
1148 (display-type DISPLAY): Returns the type of DISPLAY, as a
1149 symbol. (See `framep'.)
1150 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1151
1152 (display-device DISPLAY): Returns the name of the device that
1153 DISPLAY uses, as a string. (E.g: "/dev/pts/16", or
1154 ":0.0")
1155 => Implemented as display-name.
1156
1157 etc.
1158
1159 See next issue why this is necessary.
1160
1161 (Update: The consensus on emacs-devel seems to be to do this via
1162 integer identifiers. That's fine by me.)
1163
1164 (Done.)
1165
1166 -- The following needs to be supported:
1167
1168 $ emacsclient -t
1169 C-z
1170 $ emacsclient -t
1171 (This fails now.)
1172
1173 The cleanest way to solve this is to allow multiple displays on the
1174 same terminal device; each new emacsclient process should create
1175 its own display. As displays are currently identified by their
1176 device names, this is not possible until struct display becomes
1177 accessible as a Lisp-level object.
1178
1179 (Done.)
1180
1181 -- Miles Bader suggests that C-x C-c on an emacsclient frame should
1182 only close the frame, not exit the entire Emacs session. Update:
1183 see above for a function that does this. Maybe this should be the
1184 new default?
1185
1186 (Done. This is the new default. No complaints so far.)
1187
1188 -- Clean up the frame-local variable system. I think it's ugly and
1189 error-prone. But maybe I just haven't yet fully understood it.
1190
1191 (Nothing to do. It doesn't seem ugly any more. It's rather clever.)
1192
1193 -- Support multiple character locales. A version of
1194 `set-locale-environment' needs to be written for setting up
1195 display-local settings on ttys. I think calling
1196 set-display-table-and-terminal-coding-system and
1197 set-keyboard-coding-system would be enough. The language
1198 environment itself should remain a global setting.
1199
1200 (Done, by an ugly hack.)
1201
1202 -- The terminal customization files in term/*.el tend to change global
1203 parameters, which may confuse Emacs with multiple displays. Change
1204 them to tweak only frame-local settings, if possible. (They tend
1205 to call define-key to set function key sequences a lot.)
1206
1207 (Done, by making `function-key-map' terminal-local (i.e., part of
1208 struct kboard). This has probably covered all the remaining problems.)
1209
1210 -- Make `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' terminal-local.
1211
1212 (Done.)
1213
1214 -- Implement `terminal-local-value' and `set-terminal-local-value' to
1215 allow deterministic access to terminal local bindings. The
1216 encode-kb package can not set up `key-translation-map' without
1217 these. The terminal-local bindings seem to be independent of what
1218 frame is selected.
1219
1220 (Done.)
1221
1222 -- xt-mouse.el needs to be adapted for multi-tty. It currently
1223 signals an error on kill-emacs under X, which prevents the user
1224 from exiting Emacs. (Reported by Mnemonikk on freenode.)
1225
1226 (Done, I hope.)
1227
1228
1229 ;;; arch-tag: 8da1619e-2e79-41a8-9ac9-a0485daad17d
1230