Merged from emacs@sv.gnu.org. Last-minute emacsclient rewrites be damned!
[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 Noah Friedman <friedman@splode.com>
44 Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs <friedel@nomaden.org>
45 Samium Gromoff <_deepfire@mail.ru>
46 Mikhail Gusarov <dottedmag@dottedmag.net>
47 Eric Hanchrow <offby1@blarg.net>
48 IRIE Tetsuya <irie@t.email.ne.jp>
49 Yoshiaki Kasahara <kasahara@nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp>
50 Bas Kok <nekkobassu@yahoo.com>
51 Jurej Kubelka <Juraj.Kubelka@email.cz>
52 David Lichteblau <david@lichteblau.com>
53 Richard Lewis <rtf@jabble.com>
54 mace <mace@kirjakaapeli.lib.hel.fi>
55 Suresh Madhu <madhu@cs.unm.edu>
56 Xavier Mallard <zedek@gnu-rox.org>
57 Istvan Marko <mi-mtty@kismala.com>
58 Ted Morse <morse@ciholas.com>
59 Gergely Nagy <algernon@debian.org>
60 Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu>
61 Kalle Olavi Niemitalo <kon@iki.fi>
62 Mark Plaksin <happy@mcplaksin.org>
63 Frank Ruell <stoerte@dreamwarrior.net>
64 Tom Schutzer-Weissmann <trmsw@yahoo.co.uk>
65 Joakim Verona <joakim@verona.se>
66 Dan Waber <dwaber@logolalia.com>
67 and many others.
68
69 Richard Stallman was kind enough to review an earlier version of my
70 patches.
71
72
73 MAILING LISTS
74 -------------
75
76 The multi-tty mailing list (discussion & bug reports):
77
78 Address: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
79 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty
80 Archive: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.multi-tty/
81
82 Commit notifications (read-only):
83
84 Address: multi-tty-commits@lists.fnord.hu
85 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty-commits
86
87
88 STATUS
89 ------
90
91 The branch is now very stable and almost full-featured. All of the
92 major problems have been fixed, only a few minor issues remain. (It
93 still needs to be ported to Windows/Mac/DOS, though.) Both multiple
94 tty device support and simultaneous X and tty frame support works
95 fine. Emacsclient has been extended to support opening new tty and X
96 frames. It has been changed to open new Emacs frames by default.
97
98 The multi-tty branch has been scheduled for inclusion in the next
99 major release of Emacs (version 23). I expect the merge into the
100 development trunk to occur sometime during next year (2006), after the
101 merge of the Unicode branch.
102
103 Tested on GNU/Linux, Solaris 8, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Please let me
104 know if you succeed or fail to use it on other platforms---I'll have a
105 few tricky test cases for you.
106
107 Known problems:
108
109 * GTK support. If you compile your Emacs with the GTK
110 toolkit, some functionality of multi-tty will be lost. In
111 particular, you will not be able to work on multiple X
112 displays at once. Current releases of GTK have limitations
113 and bugs that prevent full-blown multi-display support in
114 Emacs. (GTK crashes when Emacs tries to disconnect from an
115 X server.) Use the Lucid toolkit if you want to see a
116 complete feature set.
117
118 * The single-kboard mode.
119
120 If your multi-tty Emacs session seems to be frozen, you
121 probably have a recursive editing session or a pending
122 minibuffer prompt (which is a kind of recursive editing) on
123 another display. To unfreeze your session, switch to that
124 display and complete the recursive edit, for example by
125 pressing C-] (`abort-recursive-edit').
126
127 I am sorry to say that currently there is no way to break
128 out of this "single-kboard mode" from a frozen display. If
129 you are unable to switch to the display that locks the
130 others (for example because it is on a remote computer),
131 then you can use emacsclient to break out of all recursive
132 editing sessions:
133
134 emacsclient -e '(top-level)'
135
136 Note that this (perhaps) unintuitive behaviour is by design.
137 Single-kboard mode is required because of an intrinsic Emacs
138 limitation that is very hard to eliminate. (This limitation
139 is related to the single-threaded nature of Emacs.)
140
141 I plan to implement better user notification and support for
142 breaking out of single-kboard mode from locked displays.
143
144 * Mac, Windows and DOS support is broken, doesn't even
145 compile. Multiple display support will probably not provide
146 new Emacs features on these systems, but the multi-tty
147 branch changed a few low-level interfaces, and the
148 system-dependent source files need to be adapted
149 accordingly. The changes are mostly trivial, so almost
150 anyone can help, if only by compiling the branch and
151 reporting the compiler errors.
152
153
154 HOW TO GET THE BRANCH
155 ---------------------
156
157 The branch uses Bazaar 1 (http://bazaar.canonical.com) for version control.
158
159 Retrieving the latest version of the branch:
160
161 baz register-archive -f http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/arch/2004
162 baz get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
163
164 This incantation uses an archive mirror that is hosted on a
165 high-bandwidth site. Please note that on average there is a two-hour
166 delay for commits to arrive on this mirror. My primary mirror is on the
167 low-bandwidth http://lorentey.hu/ site:
168
169 baz register-archive -f http://lorentey.hu/arch/2004/
170 baz get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
171
172 This is "instantly" updated, but very slow from outside Hungary.
173 (By "instantly" I mean as soon as I connect the notebook I work on to
174 a network. It could take days.)
175
176 The Arch supermirror provides mirroring services for all public Arch
177 repositories. We have a mirror there, too, if you prefer.
178
179 baz register-archive -f http://mirrors.sourcecontrol.net/lorentey%40elte.hu--2004
180 baz get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
181
182 My GPG key id is 0FB27A3F; it is available from
183 hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net/, or from my homepage at
184 http://lorentey.hu/rolam/gpg.html)
185
186 Don't worry if the above checkout takes a few minutes to complete;
187 once you have a source tree, updating it to the latest revision will
188 be _much_ faster. Use the following command for the update:
189
190 baz replay
191
192 You can find more information about Bazaar on
193 http://bazaar.canonical.com/. It's a distributed source control
194 system that is somewhat less broken than competing projects.
195
196 If you don't have Bazaar, the branch has a homepage from which you can
197 download conventional patches against Emacs CVS HEAD:
198
199 http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.html
200
201 I suggest you use Bazaar whenever feasible.
202
203
204 DEBIAN PACKAGES
205 ---------------
206
207 If you run Debian, or a distribution based on Debian, you are welcome
208 to use our binary packages; put these lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list:
209
210 # Multi-tty Emacs
211 deb http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt unstable multi-tty
212 deb-src http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt unstable multi-tty
213
214 Note that these packages are intended solely to provide an easy way to
215 test the new multi-tty features. They are not to be taken as Emacs
216 releases, and it's a mistake to expect robust operation or any kind of
217 timely support for them. Do not install them, unless you'd like to
218 have your editor crash on you.
219
220
221 COMPILATION
222 -----------
223
224 The multi-tty branch is compiled the same way as Emacs itself:
225
226 make maintainer-clean # (If you have compiled Emacs before)
227
228 ./configure --without-gtk <your favourite options>
229 make bootstrap
230 make install
231
232 If you have strange compilation errors, they may be caused by old
233 *.elc files that are left over from an earlier bootstrap. The `make
234 maintainer-clean' target deletes them, so it is a good idea to run
235 that before reporting a bug. (Emacs requires a clean recompilation
236 after certain kinds of source code changes.)
237
238 TESTING
239 -------
240
241 To test the multi-tty branch, start up the Emacs server with the
242 following commands:
243
244 emacs
245 M-x server-start
246
247 and then (from a shell prompt on another terminal) start emacsclient
248 with
249 emacsclient -t /optional/file/names... (for a tty frame)
250 emacsclient /optional/file/names... (for an X frame)
251
252 (Make sure both emacs and emacsclient are multi-tty versions.)
253 You'll hopefully have two fully working, independent frames on
254 separate terminals. The new frame is closed automatically when you
255 finish editing the specified files (C-x #), but delete-frame (C-x 5 0)
256 also works. Of course, you can create frames on more than two tty
257 devices.
258
259 Creating new frames on the same tty with C-x 5 2 (make-frame-command)
260 works, and behaves the same way as in previous Emacs versions. If you
261 exit emacs, all terminals should be restored to their previous states.
262
263 This is work in progress, and probably full of bugs. It is a good
264 idea to run emacs from gdb, so that you'll have a live instance to
265 debug if something goes wrong. Please send me your bug reports on our
266 mailing list: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
267
268 TIPS & TRICKS
269 -------------
270
271 I think the best way to use the new Emacs is to have it running inside
272 a disconnected GNU screen session, and always use emacsclient for
273 normal work. One advantage of this is that not a single keystroke of
274 your work will be lost if the display device that you are using
275 crashes, or the network connection times out, or whatever. (I had an
276 extremely unstable X server for some time while I was developing these
277 patches, and running Emacs this way has saved me a number of M-x
278 recover-session invocations.)
279
280 I use the following two bash scripts to handle my Emacs sessions:
281
282 -------------------------------------------------------connect-emacs--
283 #!/bin/bash
284 # Usage: connect-emacs <name> <args>...
285 #
286 # Connects to the Emacs instance called NAME. Starts up the instance
287 # if it is not already running. The rest of the arguments are passed
288 # to emacsclient.
289
290 name="$1"
291 shift
292
293 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
294 echo "Usage: connect_emacs <name> <args>..." >&2
295 exit 1
296 fi
297 preload-emacs "$name" wait
298 /usr/bin/emacsclient.emacs-multi-tty -s "$name" "$@"
299 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
300
301 -------------------------------------------------------preload-emacs--
302 #!/bin/bash
303 # Usage: preload-emacs <name> [<waitp>]
304 #
305 # Preloads the Emacs instance called NAME in a detached screen
306 # session. Does nothing if the instance is already running. If WAITP
307 # is non-empty, the function waits until the server starts up and
308 # creates its socket; otherwise it returns immediately.
309
310 name="$1"
311 waitp="$2"
312 screendir="/var/run/screen/S-$USER"
313 serverdir="/tmp/emacs$UID"
314 emacs=/usr/bin/emacs-multi-tty # Or wherever you installed your multi-tty Emacs
315
316 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
317 echo "Usage: preload_emacs <name> [<waitp>]" >&2
318 exit 1
319 fi
320
321 if [ ! -e "$screendir"/*."$name" ]; then
322 if [ -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; then
323 # Delete leftover socket (for the wait option)
324 rm "$serverdir/$name"
325 fi
326 screen -dmS "$name" "$emacs" -nw --eval "(setq server-name \"$name\")" -f server-start
327 fi
328 if [ ! -z "$waitp" ]; then
329 while [ ! -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; do sleep 0.1; done
330 fi
331 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
332
333 I have the following in my profile to have two instances automatically
334 preloaded for editing and email:
335
336 preload-emacs editor
337 preload-emacs gnus
338
339 It is useful to set up short aliases for connect-emacs. I use the
340 following:
341
342 alias edit="connect-emacs editor"
343 alias e=edit
344 alias et="connect-emacs editor -t"
345 alias gnus="connect-emacs gnus"
346
347
348 CHANGELOG
349 ---------
350
351 See arch logs.
352
353
354 NEWS
355 ----
356
357 For the NEWS file: (Needs much, much work)
358
359 ** Support for multiple terminal devices and simultaneous graphical
360 and tty frames has been added. You can test for the presence of
361 this feature in your Lisp code by testing for the `multi-tty'
362 feature.
363
364 *** The `window-system' variable has been made frame-local. The new
365 `initial-window-system' variable contains the `window-system'
366 value for the first frame.
367
368 *** You can specify a terminal device (`tty' parameter) and a terminal
369 type (`tty-type' parameter) to `make-terminal-frame'.
370
371 *** The new function `make-frame-on-tty' allows you to create a new
372 frame on another tty device interactively.
373
374 *** The function `make-frame-on-display' now works during a tty
375 session, and `make-frame-on-tty' works during a graphical session.
376
377 *** Emacsclient has been extended to support opening a new terminal
378 frame. Its behaviour has been changed to open a new Emacs frame by
379 default. Use the -c option to get the old behavior of opening
380 files in the currently selected Emacs frame.
381
382 *** C-z now invokes `suspend-frame', C-x C-c now invokes
383 `save-buffers-kill-terminal'.
384
385 *** New functions: frame-tty-name, frame-tty-type, delete-tty,
386 suspend-tty, resume-tty, terminal-id, terminal-parameters,
387 terminal-parameter, set-terminal-parameter,
388 modify-terminal-parameters, environment, let-environment
389
390 *** New variables: local-key-translation-map, local-function-key-map
391
392 *** The `keyboard-translate-table' variable and the terminal and
393 keyboard coding systems have been made terminal-local.
394
395 *** In addition to the global key-translation-map and
396 function-key-map, Emacs has terminal-local
397 local-key-translation-map and local-function-key-map variables,
398 and uses them instead of the global keymaps to set up translations
399 and function key sequences relevant to a specific terminal device.
400
401 *** talk.el has been extended for multiple tty support.
402
403 * * *
404
405 (The rest of this file consists of my development notes and as such it
406 is probably not very interesting for anyone else.)
407
408 THINGS TO DO
409 ------------
410
411 ** See if `tty-defined-color-alist' needs to be terminal-local.
412 Update: Dan says it should be, so convert it.
413
414 ** Mikhail Gusarov suggest to add a hook akin to
415 `after-make-frame-functions' that is called whenever Emacs connects
416 to a new terminal. Good idea!
417
418 ** emacsclient -t on the console does not work after su. You have to
419 use non-root accounts or start as root to see this.
420
421 Login: root
422 Password:
423 # su lorentey
424 $ emacsclient -t
425 *ERROR*: Could not open file: /dev/tty1
426
427 The tty can be opened as /dev/tty by emacsclient, but not by Emacs.
428 This seems to be a serious problem. Currently my only idea is to
429 bring back the ugly pty proxy hack from the initial versions of
430 multi-tty. Suggestions would be appreciated.
431
432 Update: we could change emacsclient to pass its open file
433 descriptor to the Emacs process. Unfortunately, this requires a
434 new Lisp-level Emacs API, and as file descriptors are not otherwise
435 exported to Lisp, this approach seems at least as ugly as the pty
436 proxy idea.
437
438 ** lisp/vc.el depends on the terminal type during load time.
439 `vc-annotate-color-map' is one example that needs to be fixed.
440
441 ** Understand how `quit_throw_to_read_char' works, and fix any bugs
442 that come to light.
443
444 ** See if getcjmp can be eliminated somehow. Why does Emacs allow
445 asynchronous input processing while it's reading input anyway?
446
447 ** `delete-frame' events are handled by `special-event-map'
448 immediately when read by `read_char'. This is fine but it prevents
449 higher-level keymaps from binding that event to get notified of the
450 deleted frame.
451
452 Sometimes it would be useful for Lisp code to be notified of frame
453 deletions after they have happened, usually because they want to
454 clean up after the deleted frame. Not all frame-local states can
455 be stored as a frame parameter. For example,
456 `display-splash-screen' uses `recursive-edit' with a special keymap
457 override to create its buffer---and it leads to all kinds of
458 nastiness if Emacs stays in this recursive edit mode after the
459 frame containing the splash screen is deleted. Basically, the
460 splash-screen implementation wants to throw out of the recursive
461 edit when the frame is deleted; however, it is not legal to throw
462 from `delete-frame-functions' because `delete-frame' must not fail.
463 (Introducing `delete-frame-after-functions' would not help either
464 because `delete-frame' may not fail at that time either.)
465
466 Currently `fancy-splash-screens' installs a
467 `delete-frame-functions' hook that sets up a timer to exit the
468 recursive edit. This is an adequate solution, but it would perhaps
469 be better to have something like a `frame-deleted' event that could
470 be bound in the normal way.
471
472 ** Trouble: `setenv' doesn't actually set environment variables in the
473 Emacs process. This defeats the purpose of the elaborate
474 `server-with-environment' magic around the `tgetent' call in
475 `init_tty'. D'oh.
476
477 ** (Possibly) create hooks in struct device for creating frames on a
478 specific terminal, and eliminate the hackish terminal-related frame
479 parameters (display, tty, tty-type).
480
481 make_terminal_frame
482 create_tty_output
483
484 ** Decide whether to keep the C implementation of terminal parameters,
485 or revert to the previous, purely Lisp code. It turned out that
486 local environments do not need terminal parameters after all.
487
488 ** Move Fsend_string_to_terminal to term.c, and declare get_named_tty
489 as static, removing it from dispextern.h.
490 Move fatal to emacs.c and declare it somewhere.
491
492 ** Search for `suspend-emacs' references and replace them with
493 `suspend-frame', if necessary. Ditto for `save-buffers-kill-emacs'
494 vs. `save-buffers-kill-display'.
495
496 ** Emacs crashes when a tty frame is resized so that there is no space
497 for all its windows. (Tom Schutzer-Weissmann)
498
499 ** Report GTK multi-display problems to GTK maintainers. For extra
500 credit, fix them.
501
502 Currently you can not connect to new X displays when you compile
503 Emacs with GTK support. If you want to play around with GTK
504 multidisplay (and don't mind core dumps), you can edit src/config.h
505 and define HAVE_GTK_MULTIDISPLAY there by hand.
506
507 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715
508
509 Update: Han reports that GTK+ version 2.8.9 almost gets display
510 disconnects right. GTK will probably be fully fixed by the time
511 multi-tty gets into the trunk.
512
513 Update: I am still having problems with GTK+ 2.8.10. I have the
514 impression that the various multidisplay fixes will only get
515 released in GTK+ 2.10.
516
517 ** Audit `face-valid-attribute-values' usage in customize and
518 elsewhere. Its return value depends on the current window system.
519 Replace static initializers using it with runtime functions. For
520 example, custom's buttons are broken on non-initial device types.
521
522 ** Possibly turn off the double C-g feature when there is an X frame.
523 C.f. (emacs)Emergency Escape.
524
525 ** frames-on-display-list should also accept frames.
526
527 ** Consider the `tty-type' frame parameter and the `display-tty-type'
528 function. They serve the exact same purpose. I think it may be
529 a good idea to eliminate one of them, preferably `tty-type'.
530
531 ** The handling of lisp/term/*.el, and frame creation in general, is a
532 big, big mess. How come the terminal-specific file is loaded by
533 tty-create-frame-with-faces? I don't think it is necessary to load
534 these files for each frame; once per terminal should be enough.
535 Update: lisp/term/*.el is not loaded repeatedly anymore, but
536 faces.el still needs to be cleaned up.
537
538 ** Fix frame-set-background-mode in this branch. It was recently
539 changed in CVS, and frame.el in multi-tty has not yet been adapted
540 for the changes. (It needs to look at
541 default-frame-background-mode.) (Update: maybe it is fixed now;
542 needs testing.) (Note that the byte compiler has this to say about
543 term/rxvt.el:)
544
545 term/rxvt.el:309:17:Warning: assignment to free variable
546 `default-frame-background-mode'
547
548 ** I think `(set-)terminal-local-value' and the terminal parameter
549 mechanism should be integrated into a single framework.
550
551 (Update: `(set-)terminal-local-value' is now eliminated, but the
552 terminal-local variables should still be accessible as terminal
553 parameters. This also applies to `display-name' and similar
554 functions.)
555
556 ** Add the following hooks: after-delete-frame-hook (for server.el,
557 instead of delete-frame-functions),
558 after-delete-terminal-functions, after-create-terminal-functions.
559
560 ** BULK RENAME: The `display-' prefix of new Lisp-level functions
561 conflicts with stuff like `display-time-mode'. Use `device-'
562 or `terminal-' instead. I think I prefer `terminal-'.
563
564 It turns out that most of the offending Lisp functions were defined
565 in the trunk. Therefore, compatibility aliases should be defined
566 for the following names:
567
568 display-color-cells terminal-color-cells
569 display-color-p terminal-color-p
570 display-graphic-p terminal-graphic-p
571 display-grayscale-p terminal-grayscale-p
572 display-images-p terminal-images-p
573 display-mm-height terminal-mm-height
574 display-mm-width terminal-mm-width
575 display-mouse-p terminal-mouse-p
576 display-multi-font-p terminal-multi-font-p
577 display-multi-frame-p terminal-multi-frame-p
578 display-pixel-height terminal-pixel-height
579 display-pixel-width terminal-pixel-width
580 display-pixels-per-inch terminal-pixels-per-inch
581 display-planes terminal-planes
582 display-popup-menus-p terminal-popup-menus-p
583 display-save-under terminal-save-under
584 display-screens terminal-screens
585 display-supports-face-attributes-p terminal-supports-face-attributes-p
586 display-visual-class terminal-visual-class
587 framep-on-display framep-on-terminal
588 frames-on-display-list frames-on-terminal-list
589
590 The following functions were introduced in the multi-tty branch, and
591 were renamed without aliases:
592
593 delete-display delete-terminal
594 display-controlling-tty-p controlling-tty-p
595 display-list terminal-list
596 display-live-p terminal-live-p
597 display-name terminal-name
598 display-tty-type tty-type
599 frame-display frame-terminal
600 selected-display selected-terminal
601
602 ** The single-keyboard mode of MULTI_KBOARD is extremely confusing
603 sometimes; Emacs does not respond to stimuli from other keyboards.
604 At least a beep or a message would be important, if the single-mode
605 is still required to prevent interference. (Reported by Dan
606 Nicolaescu.)
607
608 Update: selecting a region with the mouse enables single_kboard
609 under X. This is very confusing.
610
611 Update: After discussions with Richard Stallman, this will be
612 resolved by having locked displays warn the user to wait, and
613 introducing a complex protocol to remotely bail out of
614 single-kboard mode by pressing C-g.
615
616 Update: Warning the user is not trivial to implement, as Emacs has
617 only one echo area, shared by all frames. Ideally the warning
618 should not be displayed on the display that is locking the others.
619 Perhaps the high probability of user confusion caused by
620 single_kboard mode deserves a special case in the display code.
621 Alternatively, it might be good enough to signal single_kboard mode
622 by changing the modelines or some other frame-local display element
623 on the locked out displays.
624
625 Update: In fact struct kboard does have an echo_string slot.
626
627 ** The session management module is prone to crashes when the X
628 connection is closed and then later I try to connect to a new X
629 session:
630
631 #0 0xb7ebc806 in SmcGetIceConnection () from /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6
632 #1 0x080e6641 in x_session_check_input (bufp=0xbf86c9c0) at xsmfns.c:144
633 #2 0x080d3bbc in XTread_socket (device=0xa722ff8, expected=1, hold_quit=0xbf86ca90) at xterm.c:7037
634 #3 0x080fa404 in read_avail_input (expected=1) at keyboard.c:6696
635 #4 0x080fa4ca in handle_async_input () at keyboard.c:6900
636 #5 0x080d51fa in x_term_init (display_name=162628899, xrm_option=0x0, resource_name=0x857068c "emacs") at xterm.c:10622
637 #6 0x080d920e in x_display_info_for_name (name=162628899) at xfns.c:3975
638 #7 0x080d92f9 in check_x_display_info (object=1) at xfns.c:274
639 #8 0x080d97b8 in Fx_create_frame (parms=151221485) at xfns.c:3016
640 #9 0x0815bf72 in Ffuncall (nargs=2, args=0xbf86ceec) at eval.c:2851
641
642 I installed a workaround to prevent this. The X session manager is
643 only contacted when the very first display in the Emacs session is
644 an X display. Also, x_delete_display() on this display aborts
645 session management, and XTread_socket only calls
646 x_session_check_input when it is called for the display that the
647 session was opened on. While this does not really fix the bug, it
648 makes it much less frequent, because session manager support will
649 not normally be enabled when Emacs can survive the shutdown of the
650 X server.
651
652 See if xsmfns.c should be updated.
653
654 ** Hunt down display-related functions in frame.el and extend them all
655 to accept display ids.
656
657 ** rif->flush_display_optional (NULL) calls should be replaced by a
658 new global function.
659
660 ** The set-locale-environment hack (adding the DISPLAY option) should
661 be replaced with a clean design.
662
663 ** standard-display-table should be display-local.
664 standard-display-european should be display-local.
665
666 ** With iswitchb-default-method set to 'always-frame, only frames on
667 the current display should be considered. This might involve
668 extending `get-buffer-window'.
669
670 ** Have a look at Vlocale_coding_system. Seems like it would be a
671 tedious job to localize it, although most references use it for
672 interfacing with libc and are therefore OK with the global
673 definition.
674
675 Exceptions found so far: x-select-text and
676 x-cut-buffer-or-selection-value.
677
678 ** Have a look at fatal_error_hook.
679
680 ** Have a look at set_frame_matrix_frame.
681
682 ** Check if we got term-setup-hook right.
683
684 ** I think tip_frame should be display-local.
685
686 ** Check display reference count handling in x_create_tip_frame.
687
688 ** make-frame does not correctly handle extra parameters in its
689 argument:
690
691 (frame-parameter (make-frame (list (cons 'foobar 42))) 'foobar)
692 => nil
693
694 (This is likely an error in the CVS trunk.)
695
696 ** Dan Nicolaescu suggests that -nw should be added as an alias for -t
697 in emacsclient. Good idea. (Alas, implementing this is not
698 trivial, getopt_long does not seem to support two-letter ``short''
699 options. Patches are welcome.)
700
701 ** Mark Plaksin suggests that emacsclient should accept the same
702 X-related command-line arguments as Emacs. Most of the X-related
703 argument-handling is done in Lisp, so this should be quite easy to
704 implement. (For example, Samium Gromoff wants emacsclient to
705 support --geometry; implementing this would add that support.)
706
707 ** Gergely Nagy suggests that C-x # should only kill the current
708 frame, not any other emacsclient frame that may have the same file
709 opened for editing. I think I agree with him.
710
711 ** Very strange bug: visible-bell does not work on secondary
712 terminals in xterm and konsole. The screen does flicker a bit,
713 but it's so quick it isn't noticable.
714
715 (Update: This is probably some problem with padding or whatnot on
716 the secondary terminals.)
717
718 ** Move baud_rate to struct display.
719
720 ** Implement support for starting an interactive Emacs session without
721 an initial frame. (The user would connect to it and open frames
722 later, with emacsclient.)
723
724 ** Fix Mac support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
725 current state of Mac-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
726 are not useful; before starting work on Mac support, revert to
727 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
728
729 ** Fix W32 support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
730 current state of W32-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
731 are not useful; before starting work on W32 support, revert to
732 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
733
734 ** Fix DOS support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
735 current state of DOS-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
736 are not useful; before starting work on DOS support, revert to
737 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
738
739 ** Do a grep on XXX and ?? for more issues.
740
741 ** flow-ctrl.el must be updated.
742
743 ** Fix stuff_char for multi-tty. Doesn't seem to be of high priority.
744
745 DIARY OF CHANGES
746 ----------------
747
748 (ex-TODO items with explanations.)
749
750 -- Introduce a new struct for terminal devices.
751
752 (Done, see struct tty_output. The list of members is not yet
753 complete.)
754
755 -- Change the bootstrap procedure to initialize tty_list.
756
757 (Done, but needs review.)
758
759 -- Change make-terminal-frame to support specifying another tty.
760
761 (Done, new frame parameters: `tty' and `tty-type'.)
762
763 -- Implement support for reading from multiple terminals.
764
765 (Done, read_avail_input tries to read from each terminal, until one
766 succeeds. MULTI_KBOARD is not used. Secondary terminals don't send
767 SIGIO!)
768
769 (Update: They do, now.)
770
771 (Update2: After enabling X, they don't.)
772
773 -- other-frame should cycle through the frames on the `current'
774 terminal only.
775
776 (Done, by trivially modifiying next_frame and prev_frame.)
777
778 -- Support different terminal sizes.
779
780 (Done, no problem.)
781
782 -- Make sure terminal resizes are handled gracefully. (Could be
783 problematic.)
784
785 (Done. We don't get automatic SIGWINCH for additional ttys,
786 though.)
787
788 -- Extend emacsclient to automatically open a new tty when it connects
789 to Emacs.
790
791 (Done. It's an ugly hack, needs more work.)
792
793 -- Redisplay must refresh the topmost frame on *all* terminals, not
794 just the initial terminal.
795
796 (Done, but introduced an ugly redisplay problems. Ugh.)
797
798 -- Fix redisplay problems.
799
800 (Done; it turned out that the entire Wcm structure must be moved
801 inside tty_output. Why didn't I catch this earlier?)
802
803 -- Provide a way for emacsclient to tell Emacs that the tty has been
804 resized.
805
806 (Done, simply forward the SIGWINCH signal.)
807
808 -- Each keypress should automatically select the frame corresponding
809 to the terminal that it was coming from. This means that Emacs
810 must know from which terminal the last keyboard event came from.
811
812 (Done, it was quite simple, the input event system already
813 supported multiple frames.)
814
815 -- Fix SIGIO issue with secondary terminals.
816
817 (Done, emacsclient signals Emacs after writing to the proxy pseudo
818 terminal. Note that this means that multi-tty does not work with
819 raw ttys!)
820
821 (Update: This is bullshit. There is a read_input_waiting function,
822 extend that somehow.)
823
824 (Update of update: The first update was not right either, extending
825 read_input_waiting was not necessary. Secondary ttys do seem to
826 send signals on input.)
827
828 (Update^3: Not any more.)
829
830 -- Make make-terminal-frame look up the `tty' and `tty-type' frame
831 parameters from the currently selected terminal before the global
832 default.
833
834 (Done.)
835
836 -- Put all cached terminal escape sequences into struct tty_output.
837 Currently, they are still stored in global variables, so we don't
838 really support multiple terminal types.
839
840 (Done. It was not fun.)
841
842 -- Implement sane error handling after initialization. (Currently
843 emacs exits if you specify a bad terminal type.) The helpful error
844 messages must still be provided when Emacs starts.
845
846 (Done.)
847
848 -- Implement terminal deletion, i.e., deleting local frames, closing
849 the tty device and restoring its previous state without exiting
850 Emacs.
851
852 (Done, but at the moment only called when an error happens during
853 initialization. There is a memory corruption error around this
854 somewhere.) (Update: now it is fully enabled.)
855
856 -- Implement automatic deletion of terminals when the last frame on
857 that terminal is closed.
858
859 (Done.)
860
861 -- Restore tty screen after closing the terminal.
862
863 (Done, we do the same as Emacs 21.2 for all terminals.)
864
865 -- 'TERM=dumb src/emacs' does not restore the terminal state.
866
867 (Done.)
868
869 -- C-g should work on secondary terminals.
870
871 (Done, but the binding is not configurable.)
872
873 -- Deal with SIGHUP in Emacs and in emacsclient. (After this, the
874 server-frames may be removed from server.el.)
875
876 (Done, nothing to do. It seems that Emacs does not receive SIGHUP
877 from secondary ttys, which is actually a good thing.) (Update: I
878 think it would be a bad idea to remove server-frames.)
879
880 -- Change emacsclient/server.el to support the -t argument better,
881 i.e. automatically close the socket when the frame is closed.
882
883 (Seems to be working OK.)
884
885 -- Fix mysterious memory corruption error with tty deletion. To
886 trigger it, try the following shell command:
887
888 while true; do TERM=no-such-terminal-definition emacsclient -h; done
889
890 Emacs usually dumps core after a few dozen iterations. (The bug
891 seems to be related to the xfreeing or bzeroing of
892 tty_output.Wcm. Maybe there are outside references to struct Wcm?
893 Why were these vars collected into a struct before multi-tty
894 support?)
895
896 (Done. Whew. It turned out that the problem had nothing to do
897 with hypothetical external references to Wcm, or any other
898 tty_output component; it was simply that delete_tty closed the
899 filehandles of secondary ttys twice, resulting in fclose doubly
900 freeing memory. Utterly trivial matter. I love the C's memory
901 management, it puts hair on your chest.)
902
903 -- Support raw secondary terminals. (Note that SIGIO works only on
904 the controlling terminal.) Hint: extend read_input_waiting for
905 multiple ttys and hopefully this will be fixed.
906
907 (Done, it seems to have been working already for some time. It
908 seems F_SETOWN does work, after all. Not sure what made it fail
909 earlier, but it seems to be fixed (there were several changes
910 around request_sigio, maybe one of them did it).
911 read_input_waiting is only used in sys_select, don't change
912 it.) (Update: After adding X support, it's broken again.)
913 (Update^2: No it isn't.) :-)
914
915 -- Find out why does Emacs abort when it wants to close its
916 controlling tty. Hint: chan_process[] array. Hey, maybe
917 noninterrupt-IO would work, too? Update: no, there is no process
918 for stdin/out.
919
920 (Done. Added add/delete_keyboard_wait_descriptor to
921 term_init/delete_tty. The hint was right, in a way.)
922
923 -- Issue with SIGIO: it needs to be disabled during redisplay. See if
924 fcntl kernel behaviour could be emulated by emacsclient.
925
926 (Done. Simply disabled the SIGIO emulation hack in emacsclient.)
927 (Update: it was added back.) (Update^2: and removed again.)
928
929 -- server.el: There are issues with saving files in buffers of closed
930 clients. Try editing a file with emacsclient -f, and (without
931 saving it) do a delete-frame. The frame is closed without
932 question, and a surprising confirmation prompt appears in another
933 frame.
934
935 (Done. delete-frame now asks for confirmation if it still has
936 pending buffers, and modified buffers don't seem to be deleted.)
937
938 -- emacsclient.el, server.el: Handle eval or file open errors when
939 doing -t.
940
941 (Done.)
942
943 -- Make parts of struct tty_output accessible from Lisp. The device
944 name and the type is sufficient.
945
946 (Done, see frame-tty-name and frame-tty-type.)
947
948 -- Export delete_tty to the Lisp environment, for emacsclient.
949
950 (Done, see delete-tty.)
951
952 -- Get rid of the accessor macros in termchar.h, or define macros for
953 all members.
954
955 (Done.)
956
957 -- Move device-specific parameters (like costs) commonly used by
958 device backends to a common, device-dependent structure.
959
960 (Done. See struct display_method in termhooks.h.)
961
962 -- Fix X support.
963
964 (Done. Well, it seems to be working.)
965
966 -- Allow simultaneous X and tty frames. (Handling input could be
967 tricky. Or maybe not.)
968
969 (Done. Allowed, that is. It is currently extremely unstable, to
970 the point of being unusable. The rif variable causes constant
971 core dumps. Handling input is indeed tricky.)
972
973 -- Rewrite multi-tty input in terms of MULTI_KBOARD.
974
975 (Done. In fact, there was no need to rewrite anything, I just
976 added a kboard member to tty_display_info, and initialized the
977 frame's kboard from there.)
978
979 -- Fix rif issue with X-tty combo sessions. IMHO the best thing to do
980 is to get rid of that global variable (and use the value value in
981 display_method, which is guaranteed to be correct).
982
983 (Done, did exactly that. Core dumps during combo sessions became
984 much rarer. In fact, I have not yet met a single one.)
985
986 -- Add multi-tty support to talk.el.
987
988 (Done.)
989
990 -- Clean up the source of emacsclient. It is a mess.
991
992 (Done, eliminated stupid proxy-pty kludge.)
993
994 -- Fix faces on tty frames during X-tty combo sessions. There is an
995 init_frame_faces call in init_sys_modes, see if there is a problem
996 with it.
997
998 (Done, there was a stupid mistake in
999 Ftty_supports_face_attributes_p. Colors are broken, though.)
1000
1001 -- C-x 5 2, C-x 5 o, C-x 5 0 on an emacsclient frame unexpectedly
1002 exits emacsclient. This is a result of trying to be clever with
1003 delete-frame-functions.
1004
1005 (Fixed, added delete-tty-after-functions, and changed server.el to
1006 use it.)
1007
1008 -- Something with (maybe) multi-keyboard support broke function keys
1009 and arrows on ttys during X+tty combo sessions. Debug this.
1010
1011 (I can't reproduce it, maybe the terminal type was wrong.)
1012
1013 -- Fix input from raw ttys (again).
1014
1015 (Now it seems to work all right.)
1016
1017 -- During an X-tty combo session, a (message "Hello") from a tty frame
1018 goes to the X frame. Fix this.
1019
1020 (Done. There was a safeguard against writing to the initial
1021 terminal frame during bootstrap which prevented echo_area_display
1022 from working correctly on a tty frame during a combo session.)
1023
1024 -- If there are no frames on its controlling terminal, Emacs should
1025 exit if the user presses C-c there.
1026
1027 (Done, as far as possible. See the SIGTERM comment in
1028 interrupt_signal on why this seems to be impossible to solve this
1029 in general.)
1030
1031 -- During an X session, Emacs seems to read from stdin. Also, Emacs
1032 fails to start without a controlling tty.
1033
1034 (Fixed by replacing the troublesome termcap display with a dummy
1035 bootstrap display during bootstrap.
1036
1037 -- Do tty output through struct display, like graphical display
1038 backends.
1039
1040 (Done.)
1041
1042 -- Define an output_initial value for output_method for the initial
1043 frame that is dumped with Emacs. Checking for this frame (e.g. in
1044 cmd_error_internal) is ugly.
1045
1046 (Done, breaking interactive temacs.)
1047
1048 -- The command `emacsclient -t -e '(delete-frame)'' fails to exit.
1049
1050 (Fixed.)
1051
1052 -- frame-creation-function should always create a frame that is on the
1053 same display as the selected frame. Maybe frame-creation-function
1054 should simply be removed and make-frame changed to do the right
1055 thing.
1056
1057 (Done, with a nice hack. frame-creation-function is now frame-local.)
1058
1059 -- Fix C-g on raw ttys.
1060
1061 (Done. I disabled the interrupt/quit keys on all secondary
1062 terminals, so Emacs sees C-g as normal input. This looks like an
1063 overkill, because emacsclient has extra code to pass SIGINT to
1064 Emacs, so C-g should remain the interrupt/quit key on emacsclient
1065 frames. See the next entry why implementing this distinction would
1066 be a bad idea.)
1067
1068 -- Make sure C-g goes to the right frame with ttys. This is hard, as
1069 SIGINT doesn't have a tty parameter. :-(
1070
1071 (Done, the previous change fixes this as a pleasant side effect.)
1072
1073 -- I have seen a case when Emacs with multiple ttys fell into a loop
1074 eating 100% of CPU time. Strace showed this loop:
1075
1076 getpid() = 30284
1077 kill(30284, SIGIO) = 0
1078 --- SIGIO (I/O possible) @ 0 (0) ---
1079 ioctl(6, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
1080 ioctl(5, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
1081 ioctl(0, FIONREAD, [0]) = 0
1082 sigreturn() = ? (mask now [])
1083 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747760}, NULL) = 0
1084 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747806}, NULL) = 0
1085 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
1086 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
1087 gettimeofday({1072842297, 748245}, NULL) = 0
1088
1089 I have seen something similar with a single X frame, but have not
1090 been able to reproduce it for debugging.
1091
1092 Update: This may have been caused by checking for nread != 0
1093 instead of nread > 0 after calling read_socket_hook in
1094 read_avail_input.
1095
1096 (Fixed. This was caused by unconditionally including stdin in
1097 input_wait_mask in init_process. The select call in
1098 wait_reading_process_input always returned immediately, indicating
1099 that there is pending input from stdin, which nobody read.
1100
1101 Note that the above strace output seems to be an unrelated but
1102 similar bug. I think that is now fixed.)
1103
1104 -- Exiting Emacs while there are emacsclient frames doesn't restore the
1105 ttys to their default states.
1106
1107 (This seems to be fixed by some previous change.)
1108
1109 -- Allow opening an X session after -nw.
1110
1111 (Done.)
1112
1113 -- Fix color handling during tty+X combo sessions. (It seems that tty
1114 sessions automatically convert the face colors to terminal colors
1115 when the face is loaded. This conversion must happen instead on
1116 the fly in write_glyphs, which might be problematic, as color
1117 approximation is currently done in lisp (term/tty-colors.el).)
1118 (Update: hm, colors seem to work fine if I start emacs with -nw and
1119 then create an X frame. Maybe it's just a small buglet somewhere.)
1120
1121 (Seems to be fixed. The problem was in startup.el, it did not
1122 initialize tty colors when the initial window system was
1123 graphical.)
1124
1125 -- emacs -nw --eval '(y-or-n-p "Foobar")' segfaults. (Reported by
1126 Romain Francoise)
1127
1128 (Fixed, there was a keyboard initialization problem.)
1129
1130 -- Fix interactive use of temacs. There are face-related SEGVs, most
1131 likely because of changes in realize_default_face, realize_face.
1132
1133 (Fixed.)
1134
1135 -- Don't exit Emacs when the last X connection fails during a
1136 multi-display session.
1137
1138 (Fixed.)
1139
1140 -- Dan Nicolaescu noticed that starting emacsclient on the same
1141 terminal device that is the controlling tty of the Emacs process
1142 gives unexpected results.
1143
1144 (Fixed.)
1145
1146 -- Istvan Marko reported that Emacs hang on ttys if it was started
1147 from a shell script.
1148
1149 (Fixed. There was a bug in the multi-tty version of
1150 narrow_foreground_group. tcsetpgrp blocks if it is called from a
1151 process that is not in the same process group as the tty.)
1152
1153 -- emacsclient -t from an Emacs term buffer does not work, complains
1154 about face problems. This can even lock up Emacs (if the recursive
1155 frame sets single_kboard). Update: the face problems are caused by
1156 bugs in term.el, not in multi-tty. The lockup is caused by
1157 single_kboard mode, and is not easily resolvable. The best thing to
1158 do is to simply refuse to create a tty frame of type `eterm'.
1159
1160 (Fixed, changed emacsclient to check for TERM=eterm. The face
1161 complaints seem to be caused by bugs in term.el; they are not
1162 related to multi-tty.)
1163
1164 -- Find out the best way to support suspending Emacs with multiple
1165 ttys. My guess: disable it on the controlling tty, but from other
1166 ttys pass it on to emacsclient somehow. (It is (I hope) trivial to
1167 extend emacsclient to handle suspend/resume. A `kill -STOP' almost
1168 works right now.)
1169
1170 (Done. I needed to play with signal handling and the server
1171 protocol a bit to make emacsclient behave as a normal UNIX program
1172 wrt foreground/background process groups.)
1173
1174 -- There is a flicker during the startup of `emacs -nw'; it's as if
1175 the terminal is initialized, reset and then initialialized again.
1176 Debug this. (Hint: narrow_foreground_group is called twice during
1177 startup.)
1178
1179 (This is gone.)
1180
1181 -- Robert Chassell has found serious copy-paste bugs with the
1182 multi-tty branch. There seem to be redisplay bugs while copying
1183 from X to a terminal frame. Copying accented characters do not
1184 work for me.
1185
1186 (Patch-124 should fix this, by changing the interprogram-*-function
1187 variables to be frame-local, as suggested by Mark Plaksin
1188 (thanks!). I think that the redisplay bugs are in fact not bugs,
1189 but delays caused by single_kboard --> perhaps MULTI_KBOARD should
1190 be removed.)
1191
1192 -- frame-creation-function was removed, which might be a bad idea.
1193 Think up a compatible solution.
1194
1195 (It was an internal interface that may be changed when necessary.)
1196
1197 -- Change Lisp code not to (getenv "TERM"); use the `tty-type' frame
1198 parameter or the frame-tty-type function instead. (M-x tags-search
1199 "TERM" helps with this.) Update: Actually, all getenv invocations
1200 should be checked for multi-tty compatibility, and an interface
1201 must be implemented to get the remote client's environment.
1202
1203 (Done. Only getenv calls in lisp/term/*.el were changed; other
1204 calls should be mostly left as they are.)
1205
1206 -- Add an elaborate mechanism for display-local variables. (There are
1207 already a few of these; search for `terminal-local' in the Elisp
1208 manual.)
1209
1210 (Not needed. Display-local variables could be emulated by
1211 frame-local variables.)
1212
1213 -- Emacs assumes that all terminal frames have the same locale
1214 settings as Emacs itself. This may lead to bogus results in a
1215 multi-locale setup. (E.g., while logging in from a remote client
1216 with a different locale.)
1217 (Update after new bugreport by Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs:
1218 (at least) the structs terminal_coding and keyboard_coding in
1219 coding.c must be moved to struct display, and the Lisp interface
1220 [set-]keyboard-coding-system must be adapted for the change.)
1221
1222 (Fixed. Emacs now uses the locale settings as seen by the
1223 emacsclient process for server tty frames.)
1224 (Update: Not really; Vlocale_coding_system is still global.)
1225
1226 -- Make `struct display' accessible to Lisp programs. Accessor functions:
1227
1228 (displayp OBJECT): Returns t if OBJECT is a display.
1229 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1230
1231 (display-list): Returns list of currently active displays.
1232 => Implemented.
1233
1234 (selected-display): Returns the display object of the selected frame.
1235 => Not strictly necessary, but implemented anyway.
1236
1237 (frame-display FRAME): Returns the display object of FRAME.
1238 => Implemented.
1239
1240 (display-frames DISPLAY): Returns a list of frames on DISPLAY.
1241 => Already implemented, see frames-on-display-list.
1242
1243 (display-type DISPLAY): Returns the type of DISPLAY, as a
1244 symbol. (See `framep'.)
1245 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1246
1247 (display-device DISPLAY): Returns the name of the device that
1248 DISPLAY uses, as a string. (E.g: "/dev/pts/16", or
1249 ":0.0")
1250 => Implemented as display-name.
1251
1252 etc.
1253
1254 See next issue why this is necessary.
1255
1256 (Update: The consensus on emacs-devel seems to be to do this via
1257 integer identifiers. That's fine by me.)
1258
1259 (Done.)
1260
1261 -- The following needs to be supported:
1262
1263 $ emacsclient -t
1264 C-z
1265 $ emacsclient -t
1266 (This fails now.)
1267
1268 The cleanest way to solve this is to allow multiple displays on the
1269 same terminal device; each new emacsclient process should create
1270 its own display. As displays are currently identified by their
1271 device names, this is not possible until struct display becomes
1272 accessible as a Lisp-level object.
1273
1274 (Done.)
1275
1276 -- Miles Bader suggests that C-x C-c on an emacsclient frame should
1277 only close the frame, not exit the entire Emacs session. Update:
1278 see above for a function that does this. Maybe this should be the
1279 new default?
1280
1281 (Done. This is the new default. No complaints so far.)
1282
1283 -- Clean up the frame-local variable system. I think it's ugly and
1284 error-prone. But maybe I just haven't yet fully understood it.
1285
1286 (Nothing to do. It doesn't seem ugly any more. It's rather clever.)
1287
1288 -- Support multiple character locales. A version of
1289 `set-locale-environment' needs to be written for setting up
1290 display-local settings on ttys. I think calling
1291 set-display-table-and-terminal-coding-system and
1292 set-keyboard-coding-system would be enough. The language
1293 environment itself should remain a global setting.
1294
1295 (Done, by an ugly hack.)
1296
1297 -- The terminal customization files in term/*.el tend to change global
1298 parameters, which may confuse Emacs with multiple displays. Change
1299 them to tweak only frame-local settings, if possible. (They tend
1300 to call define-key to set function key sequences a lot.)
1301
1302 (Done, by making `function-key-map' terminal-local (i.e., part of
1303 struct kboard). This has probably covered all the remaining problems.)
1304
1305 -- Make `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' terminal-local.
1306
1307 (Done.)
1308
1309 -- Implement `terminal-local-value' and `set-terminal-local-value' to
1310 allow deterministic access to terminal local bindings. The
1311 encode-kb package can not set up `key-translation-map' without
1312 these. The terminal-local bindings seem to be independent of what
1313 frame is selected.
1314
1315 (Done.)
1316
1317 -- xt-mouse.el needs to be adapted for multi-tty. It currently
1318 signals an error on kill-emacs under X, which prevents the user
1319 from exiting Emacs. (Reported by Mnemonikk on freenode.)
1320
1321 (Done, I hope.)
1322
1323
1324 -- Having {reset,init}_all_sys_modes in set-input-mode breaks arrow
1325 keys on non-selected terminals under screen, and sometimes on other
1326 terminal types as well. The other function keys continue to work
1327 fine. Sometimes faces on these screens become garbled.
1328
1329 This only seems to affect displays that are of the same terminfo
1330 type as the selected one. Interestingly, in screen Emacs normally
1331 reports the up arrow key as `M-o A', but after the above SNAFU, it
1332 complains about `M-[ a'. UNIX ttys are a complete mystery to me,
1333 but it seems the reset-reinitialize cycle somehow leaves the
1334 non-selected terminals in a different state than usual. I have no
1335 idea how this could happen.
1336
1337 Currently set-input-mode resets only the currently selected
1338 terminal, which seems to somehow work around the problem.
1339
1340 Update:
1341
1342 Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:
1343 > Some terminals have 2 modes for cursor keys: Application Mode where
1344 > the cursor keys transmit the codes defined in the terminfo entry, and
1345 > Cursor mode. Applications have to send the smkx and rmkx terminfo
1346 > strings to switch between the 2 modes. So Emacs (and emacsclient) have
1347 > to send smkx when initializing and rmkx when quitting (or on
1348 > suspend).
1349
1350 (I think patch-370 fixed this.)
1351
1352 -- This long-standing bug (first reported by Han Boetes) seems to come
1353 and go all the time. It is time to track it down and fix it.
1354
1355 emacs
1356 M-x server-start
1357
1358 # From another xterm:
1359 emacsclient -e '(y-or-n-p "Do you want me to crash? ")'
1360 # Notice how the answer ends up in the *scratch* buffer
1361 M-x garbage-collect
1362 SIGSEGV
1363
1364 (Fixed in patch-414 after detailed analysis by Kalle Olavi Niemitalo.)
1365
1366 -- normal-erase-is-backspace-mode in simple.el needs to be updated for
1367 multi-tty (rep. by Dan Waber). (The Delete key is broken on X
1368 because of this.)
1369
1370 (Fixed in patch-427.)
1371
1372 -- I think keyboard-translate-table should be made terminal-local.
1373
1374 (Done in patch-431.)
1375
1376 -- The semantics of terminal-local variables are confusing; it is not
1377 clear what binding is in effect in any given time. See if
1378 current_kboard (or at least the terminal-local bindings exported to
1379 Lisp) might be changed to be tied to the selected frame instead.
1380 Currently, `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' may be
1381 accessed reliably only using the hackish
1382 `(set-)terminal-local-value' functions.
1383
1384 Perhaps there should be a difference between `last-command' &co.
1385 and these more conventional configuration variables.
1386 (E.g. `symbol-value' would use current_kboard to access
1387 `last-command', but SELECTED_FRAME()->display->kboard to get the
1388 value of `function-key-map'.
1389
1390 (Fixed in patch-434.)
1391
1392 -- If the first key pressed on a new tty terminal is a function key,
1393 it is not recognized correctly. May be related to the bug below.
1394
1395 (Seems to have been fixed as a side effect of patch-434. "The bug
1396 below" was the set-input-mode madness.)
1397
1398 (Update: this bug was fixed for good in patch-449. It was tracked
1399 down to a bug in `read_key_sequence': it failed to reinitialize its
1400 local function-key-map/key-translation-map references when it
1401 switched keyboards. I don't understand why did this bug only
1402 appear on brand new frames, though!)
1403
1404 -- Disable connecting to a new X display when we use the GTK toolkit.
1405
1406 (Disabled in patch-450.)
1407
1408 -- Implement automatic forwarding of client environment variables to
1409 forked processes, as discussed on the multi-tty list. Terminal
1410 parameters are now accessible in C code, so the biggest obstacle is
1411 gone. The `getenv_internal' and `child_setup' functions in
1412 callproc.c must be changed to support the following variable:
1413
1414 terminal-local-environment-variables is a variable defined in ...
1415
1416 Enable or disable terminal-local environment variables.
1417
1418 If set to t, `getenv', `setenv' and subprocess creation
1419 functions use the environment variables of the emacsclient
1420 process that created the selected frame, ignoring
1421 `process-environment'.
1422
1423 If set to nil, Emacs uses `process-environment' and ignores
1424 the client environment.
1425
1426 Otherwise, `terminal-local-environment-variables' should be a
1427 list of variable names (represented by Lisp strings) to look
1428 up in the client environment. The rest will come from
1429 `process-environment'.
1430
1431 (Implemented in patch-461; `terminal-getenv', `terminal-setenv' and
1432 `with-terminal-environment' are now replaced by extensions to
1433 `getenv' and `setenv', and the new `local-environment-variables'
1434 facility. Yay!)
1435
1436 (Updated in patch-465 to fix the semantics of let-binding
1437 `process-environment'. `process-environment' was changed to
1438 override all local/global environment variables, and a new variable
1439 `global-environment' was introduced to have `process-environment's
1440 old meaning.)
1441
1442 (Updated in patch-466 to fix the case when two emacsclient sessions
1443 share the same terminal, but have different environment. The local
1444 environment lists are now stored as frame parameters, so the
1445 C-level terminal parameters are not strictly necessary any more.)
1446
1447 -- `Fdelete_frame' is called from various critical places where it is
1448 not acceptable for the frame deletion to fail, e.g. from
1449 x_connection_closed after an X error. `Fdelete_frame' now protects
1450 against `delete-frame-functions' throwing an error and preventing a
1451 frame delete. (patch-475)
1452
1453 -- Fix set-input-mode for multi-tty. It's a truly horrible interface;
1454 what if we'd blow it up into several separate functions (with a
1455 compatibility definition)?
1456
1457 (Done. See `set-input-interrupt-mode', `set-output-flow-control',
1458 `set-input-meta-mode' and `set-quit-char'.) (patch-457)
1459
1460 -- Let-binding `overriding-terminal-local-map' on a brand new frame
1461 does not seem to work correctly. (See `fancy-splash-screens'.)
1462 The keymap seems to be set up right, but events go to another
1463 terminal. Or is it `unread-command-events' that gets Emacs
1464 confused? Investigate.
1465
1466 (Emacs was confused because a process filter entered
1467 `recursive-edit' while Emacs was reading input. I added support
1468 for this in the input system.) (patch-489)
1469
1470 -- I smell something funny around pop_kboard's "deleted kboard" case.
1471 Determine what are the circumstances of this case, and fix any
1472 bug that comes to light.
1473
1474 (It happens simply because single_kboard's terminal is sometimes
1475 deleted while executing a command on it, for example the one that
1476 kills the terminal. There was no bug here, but I rewrote the whole
1477 single_kboard mess anyway.) (patch-489)
1478
1479 -- Understand Emacs's low-level input system (it's black magic) :-)
1480 What exactly does interrupt_input do? I tried to disable it for
1481 raw secondary tty support, but it does not seem to do anything
1482 useful. (Update: Look again. X unconditionally enables this, maybe
1483 that's why raw terminal support is broken again. I really do need
1484 to understand input.)
1485 (Update: I am starting to understand the read_key_sequence->read-char
1486 ->kbd_buffer_get_event->read_avail_input->read_socket_hook path. Yay!)
1487
1488 (Update: OK, it all seems so easy now (NOT). Input could be done
1489 synchronously (with wait_reading_process_input), or asynchronously
1490 by SIGIO or polling (SIGALRM). C-g either sets the Vquit_flag,
1491 signals a 'quit condition (when immediate_quit), or throws to
1492 `getcjmp' when Emacs was waiting for input when the C-g event
1493 arrived.)
1494
1495 -- Replace wrong_kboard_jmpbuf with a special return value of
1496 read_char. It is absurd that we use setjmp/longjmp just to return
1497 to the immediate caller.
1498
1499 (Done in patch-500.)
1500
1501 -- `tool-bar-mode', `scroll-bar-mode', `menu-bar-mode' and
1502 'fringe-mode' are modes global to the entire Emacs session, not
1503 just a single frame or a single terminal. This means that their
1504 status sometimes differs from what's actually displayed on the
1505 screen. As a consequence, the Options | Show/Hide menu sometimes
1506 shows incorrect status, and you have to select an option twice for
1507 it to have any visible effect on the current frame.
1508
1509 Change Emacs so that the status of the items in the Options |
1510 Show/Hide menu correspond to the current frame.
1511
1512 (Done in patch-537.)
1513
1514 -- The `default-directory' variable should somehow be set to the
1515 cwd of the emacsclient process when the user runs emacsclient
1516 without file arguments. Perhaps it is OK to just override the
1517 directory of the *scratch* buffer.
1518
1519 (Done in patch-539.)
1520
1521 -- The borders on tooltip frames on X are messed up. More
1522 specifically, the frame's internal border (internal-border-width
1523 frame parameter) is not filled with the correct background color.
1524
1525 It seems the border contents are drawn onto by the
1526 update_single_window call in `x-show-tip'. After some debugging, I
1527 think the window's background color is not set up
1528 correctly---calling `x_clear_area' fills the specified area with
1529 black, not light yellow.
1530
1531 (Done in patch-544. A background_pixel field was defined both in
1532 struct frame and struct x_output, and Emacs got confused between
1533 them.)
1534
1535 ;;; arch-tag: 8da1619e-2e79-41a8-9ac9-a0485daad17d
1536