Fix "first non-ASCII character on new tty frames" problem.
[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 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 Damien Cassou <damien.cassou@laposte.net>
39 Robert J. Chassell <bob@rattlesnake.com>
40 Romain Francoise <romain@orebokech.com>
41 Ami Fischman <ami@fischman.org>
42 Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs <friedel@nomaden.org>
43 IRIE Tetsuya <irie@t.email.ne.jp>
44 Yoshiaki Kasahara <kasahara@nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp>
45 Bas Kok <nekkobassu@yahoo.com>
46 Jurej Kubelka <Juraj.Kubelka@email.cz>
47 David Lichteblau <david@lichteblau.com>
48 Xavier Mallard <zedek@gnu-rox.org>
49 Istvan Marko <mi-mtty@kismala.com>
50 Ted Morse <morse@ciholas.com>
51 Gergely Nagy <algernon@debian.org>
52 Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu>
53 Kalle Olavi Niemitalo <kon@iki.fi>
54 Mark Plaksin <happy@mcplaksin.org>
55 Francisco Borges <borges@let.rug.nl>
56 Frank Ruell <stoerte@dreamwarrior.net>
57 Dan Waber <dwaber@logolalia.com>
58 and many others.
59
60 Richard Stallman was kind enough to review an earlier version of my
61 patches.
62
63
64 MAILING LISTS
65 -------------
66
67 The multi-tty mailing list (discussion & bug reports):
68
69 Address: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
70 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty
71 Archive: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.multi-tty/
72
73 Commit notifications (read-only):
74
75 Address: multi-tty-commits@lists.fnord.hu
76 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty-commits
77
78
79 STATUS
80 ------
81
82 The branch is now very stable and almost full-featured. All of the
83 major problems have been fixed, only a few minor issues remain. (It
84 still needs to be ported to Windows/Mac/DOS, though.) Both multiple
85 tty device support and simultaneous X and tty frame support works
86 fine. Emacsclient has been extended to support opening new tty and X
87 frames. It has been changed open new Emacs frames by default.
88
89 The multi-tty branch has been scheduled for inclusion in the next
90 major release of Emacs (version 23). I expect the merge into the
91 development trunk to occur sometime during next year (2005), after the
92 merge of the Unicode branch.
93
94 Tested on GNU/Linux, Solaris 8, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Please let me
95 know if you succeed or fail to use it on other platforms---I'll have a
96 few tricky test cases for you.
97
98 Known problems:
99
100 * GTK support. If you compile your Emacs with the GTK
101 toolkit, some functionality of multi-tty will be lost.
102 In particular, closing an X display causes a crash.
103 Current releases of GTK have limitations and bugs that
104 prevent full-blown multi-display support in Emacs. Use the
105 Lucid toolkit if you want to see a complete feature set.
106
107 * The single-kboard mode.
108
109 If your multi-tty Emacs session seems to be frozen, you
110 probably have a recursive editing session or a pending
111 minibuffer prompt (which is a kind of recursive editing) on
112 another display. To unfreeze your session, switch to that
113 display and complete the recursive edit, for example by
114 pressing C-] (`abort-recursive-edit').
115
116 I am sorry to say that currently there is no way to break
117 out of this "single-kboard mode" from a frozen display. If
118 you are unable to switch to the display that locks the
119 others (for example because it is on a remote computer),
120 then you can use emacsclient to break out of all recursive
121 editing sessions:
122
123 emacsclient -e '(top-level)'
124
125 Note that this (perhaps) unintuitive behaviour is by design.
126 Single-kboard mode is required because of an intrinsic Emacs
127 limitation that is very hard to eliminate. (This limitation
128 is related to the single-threaded nature of Emacs.)
129
130 I plan to implement better user notification and support for
131 breaking out of single-kboard mode from locked displays.
132
133 * Mac, Windows and DOS support is broken, doesn't even
134 compile. Multiple display support will probably not provide
135 new Emacs features on these systems, but the multi-tty
136 branch changed a few low-level interfaces, and the
137 system-dependent source files need to be adapted
138 accordingly. The changes are mostly trivial, so almost
139 anyone can help, if only by compiling the branch and
140 reporting the compiler errors. (It is not worth to do this
141 yet, though.)
142
143
144 HOW TO GET THE BRANCH
145 ---------------------
146
147 The branch uses GNU Arch (http://www.gnuarch.org) for version control.
148
149 Retrieving the latest version of the branch:
150
151 tla register-archive -f http://lorentey.hu/arch/2004/
152 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
153
154 This incantation uses my private archive mirror that is hosted on a
155 relatively low-bandwidth site; if you are outside Hungary, you will
156 probably want to you use my secondary mirror: (Note that the -f option
157 will overwrite the archive location if you have previously registered
158 the Hungarian one.)
159
160 tla register-archive -f http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/arch/2004
161 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
162
163 http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/arch/2004
164
165 The Arch supermirror provides mirroring services for all public Arch
166 repositories. We have a mirror there, too, if you prefer.
167
168 tla register-archive -f http://mirrors.sourcecontrol.net/lorentey%40elte.hu--2004
169 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
170
171 My GPG key id is 0FB27A3F; it is available from
172 hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net/, or from my homepage at
173 http://lorentey.hu/rolam/gpg.html)
174
175 Don't worry if the above checkout takes a few minutes to complete;
176 once you have a source tree, updating it to the latest revision will
177 be _much_ faster. Use the following command for the update:
178
179 tla replay
180
181 You can find more information about Arch on http://wiki.gnuarch.org/.
182 It's a wonderful source control system, I highly recommend it.
183
184 If you don't have tla, the branch has a homepage from which you can
185 download conventional patches against Emacs CVS HEAD:
186
187 http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.html
188
189 DEBIAN PACKAGES
190 ---------------
191
192 If you run Debian, or a distribution based on Debian, you are welcome
193 to use our binary packages; put these lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list:
194
195 # Multi-tty Emacs
196 deb http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt unstable multi-tty
197 deb-src http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt unstable multi-tty
198
199 Note that these packages are intended solely to provide an easy way to
200 test the new multi-tty features. They are not to be taken as Emacs
201 releases, and it's a mistake to expect robust operation or any kind of
202 timely support for them. Do not install them, unless you'd like to
203 have your editor crash on you.
204
205
206 COMPILATION
207 -----------
208
209 The multi-tty branch is compiled the same way as Emacs itself:
210
211 make maintainer-clean # (If you have compiled Emacs before)
212
213 ./configure --without-gtk <your favourite options>
214 make bootstrap
215 make install
216
217 If you have strange compilation errors, they may be caused by old
218 *.elc files that are left over from an earlier bootstrap. The `make
219 maintainer-clean' target deletes them, so it is a good idea to run
220 that before reporting a bug. (Emacs requires a clean recompilation
221 after certain kinds of source code changes.)
222
223 TESTING
224 -------
225
226 To test the multi-tty branch, start up the Emacs server with the
227 following commands:
228
229 emacs
230 M-x server-start
231
232 and then (from a shell prompt on another terminal) start emacsclient
233 with
234 emacsclient -t /optional/file/names... (for a tty frame)
235 emacsclient /optional/file/names... (for an X frame)
236
237 (Make sure both emacs and emacsclient are multi-tty versions.)
238 You'll hopefully have two fully working, independent frames on
239 separate terminals. The new frame is closed automatically when you
240 finish editing the specified files (C-x #), but delete-frame (C-x 5 0)
241 also works. Of course, you can create frames on more than two tty
242 devices.
243
244 Creating new frames on the same tty with C-x 5 2 works, and they
245 behave the same way as in previous Emacs versions. If you exit emacs,
246 all terminals should be restored to their previous states.
247
248 This is work in progress, and probably full of bugs. It is a good
249 idea to run emacs from gdb, so that you'll have a live instance to
250 debug if something goes wrong. Please send me your bug reports on our
251 mailing list: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
252
253 TIPS & TRICKS
254 -------------
255
256 I think the best way to use the new Emacs is to have it running inside
257 a disconnected GNU screen session, and always use emacsclient for
258 normal work. One advantage of this is that not a single keystroke of
259 your work will be lost if the display device that you are using
260 crashes, or the network connection times out, or whatever. (I had an
261 extremely unstable X server for some time while I was developing these
262 patches, and running Emacs this way has saved me a number of M-x
263 recover-session invocations.)
264
265 I use the following two bash scripts to handle my Emacs sessions:
266
267 -------------------------------------------------------connect-emacs--
268 #!/bin/bash
269 # Usage: connect-emacs <name> <args>...
270 #
271 # Connects to the Emacs instance called NAME. Starts up the instance
272 # if it is not already running. The rest of the arguments are passed
273 # to emacsclient.
274
275 name="$1"
276 shift
277
278 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
279 echo "Usage: connect_emacs <name> <args>..." >&2
280 exit 1
281 fi
282 preload-emacs "$name" wait
283 /usr/bin/emacsclient.emacs-multi-tty -s "$name" "$@"
284 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
285
286 -------------------------------------------------------preload-emacs--
287 #!/bin/bash
288 # Usage: preload-emacs <name> [<waitp>]
289 #
290 # Preloads the Emacs instance called NAME in a detached screen
291 # session. Does nothing if the instance is already running. If WAITP
292 # is non-empty, the function waits until the server starts up and
293 # creates its socket; otherwise it returns immediately.
294
295 name="$1"
296 waitp="$2"
297 screendir="/var/run/screen/S-$USER"
298 serverdir="/tmp/emacs$UID"
299 emacs=/usr/bin/emacs-multi-tty # Or wherever you installed your multi-tty Emacs
300
301 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
302 echo "Usage: preload_emacs <name> [<waitp>]" >&2
303 exit 1
304 fi
305
306 if [ ! -e "$screendir"/*."$name" ]; then
307 if [ -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; then
308 # Delete leftover socket (for the wait option)
309 rm "$serverdir/$name"
310 fi
311 screen -dmS "$name" "$emacs" -nw --eval "(setq server-name \"$name\")" -f server-start
312 fi
313 if [ ! -z "$waitp" ]; then
314 while [ ! -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; do sleep 0.1; done
315 fi
316 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
317
318 I have the following in my profile to have two instances automatically
319 preloaded for editing and email:
320
321 preload-emacs editor
322 preload-emacs gnus
323
324 It is useful to set up short aliases for connect-emacs. I use the
325 following:
326
327 alias edit="connect-emacs editor"
328 alias e=edit
329 alias et="connect-emacs editor -t"
330 alias gnus="connect-emacs gnus"
331
332
333 CHANGELOG
334 ---------
335
336 See arch logs.
337
338
339 NEWS
340 ----
341
342 For the NEWS file: (Needs much, much work)
343
344 ** Support for multiple terminal devices has been added.
345
346 *** You can specify a terminal device (`tty' parameter) and a terminal
347 type (`tty-type' parameter) to `make-terminal-frame'.
348
349 *** You can test for the presence of multiple terminal support by
350 testing for the `multi-tty' feature.
351
352 *** Emacsclient has been extended to support opening a new terminal
353 frame. Its behaviour has been changed to open a new Emacs frame by
354 default. Use the -c option to get the old behavior of opening
355 files in the currently selected Emacs frame.
356
357 *** A make-frame-on-tty function has been added to make it easier to
358 create frames on new terminals.
359
360 *** New functions: frame-tty-name, frame-tty-type, delete-tty,
361 terminal-local-value, set-terminal-local-value
362
363 terminal-id, terminal-parameters, terminal-parameter,
364 set-terminal-parameter
365
366 *** New variables: global-key-translation-map
367
368 *** The keymaps key-translation-map and function-key-map are now
369 terminal-local.
370
371 ** Support for simultaneous graphical and terminal frames has been
372 added.
373
374 *** The function `make-frame-on-display' now works during a terminal
375 session, and `make-frame-on-tty' works during a graphical session.
376
377 *** The `window-system' variable has been made frame-local.
378
379 *** The new `initial-window-system' variable contains the
380 `window-system' value for the first frame.
381
382 *** talk.el has been extended for multiple tty support.
383
384
385 * * *
386
387 (The rest of this file consists of my development notes and as such it
388 is probably not very interesting for anyone else.)
389
390 THINGS TO DO
391 ------------
392
393 ** Report GTK multi-display problems to GTK maintainers. For extra
394 credit, fix them.
395
396 ** Disable connecting to a new X display when we use the GTK toolkit.
397
398 ** Possibly turn off the double C-g feature when there is an X frame.
399 C.f. (emacs)Emergency Escape.
400
401 ** frames-on-display-list should also accept frames.
402
403 ** I smell something funny around pop_kboard's "deleted kboard" case.
404 Determine what are the circumstances of this case, and fix any
405 bug that comes to light.
406
407 ** Consider the `tty-type' frame parameter and the `display-tty-type'
408 function. They serve the exact same purpose. I think it may be
409 a good idea to eliminate one of them, preferably `tty-type'.
410
411 ** The handling of lisp/term/*.el, and frame creation in general, is a
412 big, big mess. How come the terminal-specific file is loaded by
413 tty-create-frame-with-faces? I don't think it is necessary to load
414 these files for each frame; once per terminal should be enough.
415 Update: lisp/term/*.el is not loaded repeatedly anymore, but
416 faces.el still needs to be cleaned up.
417
418 ** Fix frame-set-background-mode in this branch. It was recently
419 changed in CVS, and frame.el in multi-tty has not yet been adapted
420 for the changes. (It needs to look at
421 default-frame-background-mode.) (Update: maybe it is fixed now;
422 needs testing.)
423
424 ** I think `(set-)terminal-local-value' and the terminal parameter
425 mechanism should be integrated into a single framework.
426
427 ** Add the following hooks: after-delete-frame-hook (for server.el,
428 instead of delete-frame-functions),
429 after-delete-terminal-functions, after-create-terminal-functions.
430
431 ** Fix set-input-mode for multi-tty. It's a truly horrible interface;
432 what if we'd blow it up into several separate functions (with a
433 compatibility definition)?
434
435 ** BULK RENAME: The `display-' prefix of new Lisp-level functions
436 conflicts with stuff like `display-time-mode'. Use `device-'
437 or `terminal-' instead. I think I prefer `terminal-'.
438
439 It turns out that most of the offending Lisp functions were defined
440 in the trunk. Therefore, compatibility aliases should be defined
441 for the following names:
442
443 display-color-cells terminal-color-cells
444 display-color-p terminal-color-p
445 display-graphic-p terminal-graphic-p
446 display-grayscale-p terminal-grayscale-p
447 display-images-p terminal-images-p
448 display-mm-height terminal-mm-height
449 display-mm-width terminal-mm-width
450 display-mouse-p terminal-mouse-p
451 display-multi-font-p terminal-multi-font-p
452 display-multi-frame-p terminal-multi-frame-p
453 display-pixel-height terminal-pixel-height
454 display-pixel-width terminal-pixel-width
455 display-pixels-per-inch terminal-pixels-per-inch
456 display-planes terminal-planes
457 display-popup-menus-p terminal-popup-menus-p
458 display-save-under terminal-save-under
459 display-screens terminal-screens
460 display-supports-face-attributes-p terminal-supports-face-attributes-p
461 display-visual-class terminal-visual-class
462 framep-on-display framep-on-terminal
463 frames-on-display-list frames-on-terminal-list
464
465 The following functions were introduced in the multi-tty branch, and
466 can be renamed without aliases:
467
468 display-controlling-tty-p terminal-controlling-tty-p
469 display-list terminal-list
470 display-live-p terminal-live-p
471 display-name terminal-name
472 display-tty-type terminal-tty-type
473 frame-display terminal-of-frame
474 delete-display delete-terminal
475
476 ** The single-keyboard mode of MULTI_KBOARD is extremely confusing
477 sometimes; Emacs does not respond to stimuli from other keyboards.
478 At least a beep or a message would be important, if the single-mode
479 is still required to prevent interference. (Reported by Dan
480 Nicolaescu.)
481
482 Update: selecting a region with the mouse enables single_kboard
483 under X. This is very confusing.
484
485 Update: After discussions with Richard Stallman, this will be
486 resolved by having locked displays warn the user to wait, and
487 introducing a complex protocol to remotely bail out of
488 single-kboard mode by pressing C-g.
489
490 Update: Warning the user is not trivial to implement, as Emacs has
491 only one echo area, shared by all frames. Ideally the warning
492 should not be displayed on the display that is locking the others.
493 Perhaps the high probability of user confusion caused by
494 single_kboard mode deserves a special case in the display code.
495 Alternatively, it might be good enough to signal single_kboard mode
496 by changing the modelines or some other frame-local display element
497 on the locked out displays.
498
499 ** The session management module is prone to crashes when the X
500 connection is closed and then later I try to connect to a new X
501 session:
502
503 #0 0xb7ebc806 in SmcGetIceConnection () from /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6
504 #1 0x080e6641 in x_session_check_input (bufp=0xbf86c9c0) at xsmfns.c:144
505 #2 0x080d3bbc in XTread_socket (device=0xa722ff8, expected=1, hold_quit=0xbf86ca90) at xterm.c:7037
506 #3 0x080fa404 in read_avail_input (expected=1) at keyboard.c:6696
507 #4 0x080fa4ca in handle_async_input () at keyboard.c:6900
508 #5 0x080d51fa in x_term_init (display_name=162628899, xrm_option=0x0, resource_name=0x857068c "emacs") at xterm.c:10622
509 #6 0x080d920e in x_display_info_for_name (name=162628899) at xfns.c:3975
510 #7 0x080d92f9 in check_x_display_info (object=1) at xfns.c:274
511 #8 0x080d97b8 in Fx_create_frame (parms=151221485) at xfns.c:3016
512 #9 0x0815bf72 in Ffuncall (nargs=2, args=0xbf86ceec) at eval.c:2851
513
514 I installed a workaround to prevent this. The X session manager is
515 only contacted when the very first display in the Emacs session is
516 an X display. Also, x_delete_display() on this display aborts
517 session management, and XTread_socket only calls
518 x_session_check_input when it is called for the display that the
519 session was opened on. While this does not really fix the bug, it
520 makes it much less frequent, because session manager support will
521 not normally be enabled when Emacs can survive the shutdown of the
522 X server.
523
524 See if xsmfns.c should be updated.
525
526 ** Hunt down display-related functions in frame.el and extend them all
527 to accept display ids.
528
529 ** rif->flush_display_optional (NULL) calls should be replaced by a
530 new global function.
531
532 ** The set-locale-environment hack (adding the DISPLAY option) should
533 be replaced with a clean design.
534
535 ** standard-display-table should be display-local.
536 standard-display-european should be display-local.
537
538 ** With iswitchb-default-method set to 'always-frame, only frames on
539 the current display should be considered. This might involve
540 extending `get-buffer-window'.
541
542 ** Have a look at Vlocale_coding_system. Seems like it would be a
543 tedious job to localize it, although most references use it for
544 interfacing with libc and are therefore OK with the global
545 definition.
546
547 Exceptions found so far: x-select-text and
548 x-cut-buffer-or-selection-value.
549
550 ** Have a look at fatal_error_hook.
551
552 ** Have a look at set_frame_matrix_frame.
553
554 ** Check if we got term-setup-hook right.
555
556 ** I think tip_frame should be display-local.
557
558 ** Check display reference count handling in x_create_tip_frame.
559
560 ** make-frame does not correctly handle extra parameters in its
561 argument:
562
563 (frame-parameter (make-frame (list (cons 'foobar 42))) 'foobar)
564 => nil
565
566 (This is likely an error in the CVS trunk.)
567
568 ** Dan Nicolaescu suggests that -nw should be added as an alias for -t
569 in emacsclient. Good idea. (Alas, implementing this is not
570 trivial, getopt_long does not seem to support two-letter ``short''
571 options. Patches are welcome.)
572
573 ** Mark Plaksin suggests that emacsclient should accept the same
574 X-related command-line arguments as Emacs. Most of the X-related
575 argument-handling is done in Lisp, so this should be quite easy to
576 implement.
577
578 ** Gergely Nagy suggests that C-x # should only kill the current
579 frame, not any other emacsclient frame that may have the same file
580 opened for editing. I think I agree with him.
581
582 ** Very strange bug: visible-bell does not work on secondary
583 terminals in xterm and konsole. The screen does flicker a bit,
584 but it's so quick it isn't noticable.
585
586 ** Move baud_rate to struct display.
587
588 ** Implement support for starting an interactive Emacs session without
589 an initial frame. (The user would connect to it and open frames
590 later, with emacsclient.)
591
592 ** Fix Mac support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
593 current state of Mac-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
594 are not useful; before starting work on Mac support, revert to
595 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
596
597 ** Fix W32 support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
598 current state of W32-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
599 are not useful; before starting work on W32 support, revert to
600 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
601
602 ** Fix DOS support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
603 current state of DOS-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
604 are not useful; before starting work on DOS support, revert to
605 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
606
607 ** Do a grep on XXX and ?? for more issues.
608
609 ** Understand Emacs's low-level input system (it's black magic) :-)
610 What exactly does interrupt_input do? I tried to disable it for
611 raw secondary tty support, but it does not seem to do anything
612 useful. (Update: Look again. X unconditionally enables this, maybe
613 that's why raw terminal support is broken again. I really do need
614 to understand input.)
615 (Update: I am starting to understand the read_key_sequence->read-char
616 ->kbd_buffer_get_event->read_avail_input->read_socket_hook path. Yay!)
617
618 ** flow-ctrl.el must be updated.
619
620 ** Fix stuff_char for multi-tty. Doesn't seem to be of high priority.
621
622 DIARY OF CHANGES
623 ----------------
624
625 (ex-TODO items with explanations.)
626
627 -- Introduce a new struct for terminal devices.
628
629 (Done, see struct tty_output. The list of members is not yet
630 complete.)
631
632 -- Change the bootstrap procedure to initialize tty_list.
633
634 (Done, but needs review.)
635
636 -- Change make-terminal-frame to support specifying another tty.
637
638 (Done, new frame parameters: `tty' and `tty-type'.)
639
640 -- Implement support for reading from multiple terminals.
641
642 (Done, read_avail_input tries to read from each terminal, until one
643 succeeds. MULTI_KBOARD is not used. Secondary terminals don't send
644 SIGIO!)
645
646 (Update: They do, now.)
647
648 (Update2: After enabling X, they don't.)
649
650 -- other-frame should cycle through the frames on the `current'
651 terminal only.
652
653 (Done, by trivially modifiying next_frame and prev_frame.)
654
655 -- Support different terminal sizes.
656
657 (Done, no problem.)
658
659 -- Make sure terminal resizes are handled gracefully. (Could be
660 problematic.)
661
662 (Done. We don't get automatic SIGWINCH for additional ttys,
663 though.)
664
665 -- Extend emacsclient to automatically open a new tty when it connects
666 to Emacs.
667
668 (Done. It's an ugly hack, needs more work.)
669
670 -- Redisplay must refresh the topmost frame on *all* terminals, not
671 just the initial terminal.
672
673 (Done, but introduced an ugly redisplay problems. Ugh.)
674
675 -- Fix redisplay problems.
676
677 (Done; it turned out that the entire Wcm structure must be moved
678 inside tty_output. Why didn't I catch this earlier?)
679
680 -- Provide a way for emacsclient to tell Emacs that the tty has been
681 resized.
682
683 (Done, simply forward the SIGWINCH signal.)
684
685 -- Each keypress should automatically select the frame corresponding
686 to the terminal that it was coming from. This means that Emacs
687 must know from which terminal the last keyboard event came from.
688
689 (Done, it was quite simple, the input event system already
690 supported multiple frames.)
691
692 -- Fix SIGIO issue with secondary terminals.
693
694 (Done, emacsclient signals Emacs after writing to the proxy pseudo
695 terminal. Note that this means that multi-tty does not work with
696 raw ttys!)
697
698 (Update: This is bullshit. There is a read_input_waiting function,
699 extend that somehow.)
700
701 (Update of update: The first update was not right either, extending
702 read_input_waiting was not necessary. Secondary ttys do seem to
703 send signals on input.)
704
705 (Update^3: Not any more.)
706
707 -- Make make-terminal-frame look up the `tty' and `tty-type' frame
708 parameters from the currently selected terminal before the global
709 default.
710
711 (Done.)
712
713 -- Put all cached terminal escape sequences into struct tty_output.
714 Currently, they are still stored in global variables, so we don't
715 really support multiple terminal types.
716
717 (Done. It was not fun.)
718
719 -- Implement sane error handling after initialization. (Currently
720 emacs exits if you specify a bad terminal type.) The helpful error
721 messages must still be provided when Emacs starts.
722
723 (Done.)
724
725 -- Implement terminal deletion, i.e., deleting local frames, closing
726 the tty device and restoring its previous state without exiting
727 Emacs.
728
729 (Done, but at the moment only called when an error happens during
730 initialization. There is a memory corruption error around this
731 somewhere.) (Update: now it is fully enabled.)
732
733 -- Implement automatic deletion of terminals when the last frame on
734 that terminal is closed.
735
736 (Done.)
737
738 -- Restore tty screen after closing the terminal.
739
740 (Done, we do the same as Emacs 21.2 for all terminals.)
741
742 -- 'TERM=dumb src/emacs' does not restore the terminal state.
743
744 (Done.)
745
746 -- C-g should work on secondary terminals.
747
748 (Done, but the binding is not configurable.)
749
750 -- Deal with SIGHUP in Emacs and in emacsclient. (After this, the
751 server-frames may be removed from server.el.)
752
753 (Done, nothing to do. It seems that Emacs does not receive SIGHUP
754 from secondary ttys, which is actually a good thing.) (Update: I
755 think it would be a bad idea to remove server-frames.)
756
757 -- Change emacsclient/server.el to support the -t argument better,
758 i.e. automatically close the socket when the frame is closed.
759
760 (Seems to be working OK.)
761
762 -- Fix mysterious memory corruption error with tty deletion. To
763 trigger it, try the following shell command:
764
765 while true; do TERM=no-such-terminal-definition emacsclient -h; done
766
767 Emacs usually dumps core after a few dozen iterations. (The bug
768 seems to be related to the xfreeing or bzeroing of
769 tty_output.Wcm. Maybe there are outside references to struct Wcm?
770 Why were these vars collected into a struct before multi-tty
771 support?)
772
773 (Done. Whew. It turned out that the problem had nothing to do
774 with hypothetical external references to Wcm, or any other
775 tty_output component; it was simply that delete_tty closed the
776 filehandles of secondary ttys twice, resulting in fclose doubly
777 freeing memory. Utterly trivial matter. I love the C's memory
778 management, it puts hair on your chest.)
779
780 -- Support raw secondary terminals. (Note that SIGIO works only on
781 the controlling terminal.) Hint: extend read_input_waiting for
782 multiple ttys and hopefully this will be fixed.
783
784 (Done, it seems to have been working already for some time. It
785 seems F_SETOWN does work, after all. Not sure what made it fail
786 earlier, but it seems to be fixed (there were several changes
787 around request_sigio, maybe one of them did it).
788 read_input_waiting is only used in sys_select, don't change
789 it.) (Update: After adding X support, it's broken again.)
790 (Update^2: No it isn't.) :-)
791
792 -- Find out why does Emacs abort when it wants to close its
793 controlling tty. Hint: chan_process[] array. Hey, maybe
794 noninterrupt-IO would work, too? Update: no, there is no process
795 for stdin/out.
796
797 (Done. Added add/delete_keyboard_wait_descriptor to
798 term_init/delete_tty. The hint was right, in a way.)
799
800 -- Issue with SIGIO: it needs to be disabled during redisplay. See if
801 fcntl kernel behaviour could be emulated by emacsclient.
802
803 (Done. Simply disabled the SIGIO emulation hack in emacsclient.)
804 (Update: it was added back.) (Update^2: and removed again.)
805
806 -- server.el: There are issues with saving files in buffers of closed
807 clients. Try editing a file with emacsclient -f, and (without
808 saving it) do a delete-frame. The frame is closed without
809 question, and a surprising confirmation prompt appears in another
810 frame.
811
812 (Done. delete-frame now asks for confirmation if it still has
813 pending buffers, and modified buffers don't seem to be deleted.)
814
815 -- emacsclient.el, server.el: Handle eval or file open errors when
816 doing -t.
817
818 (Done.)
819
820 -- Make parts of struct tty_output accessible from Lisp. The device
821 name and the type is sufficient.
822
823 (Done, see frame-tty-name and frame-tty-type.)
824
825 -- Export delete_tty to the Lisp environment, for emacsclient.
826
827 (Done, see delete-tty.)
828
829 -- Get rid of the accessor macros in termchar.h, or define macros for
830 all members.
831
832 (Done.)
833
834 -- Move device-specific parameters (like costs) commonly used by
835 device backends to a common, device-dependent structure.
836
837 (Done. See struct display_method in termhooks.h.)
838
839 -- Fix X support.
840
841 (Done. Well, it seems to be working.)
842
843 -- Allow simultaneous X and tty frames. (Handling input could be
844 tricky. Or maybe not.)
845
846 (Done. Allowed, that is. It is currently extremely unstable, to
847 the point of being unusable. The rif variable causes constant
848 core dumps. Handling input is indeed tricky.)
849
850 -- Rewrite multi-tty input in terms of MULTI_KBOARD.
851
852 (Done. In fact, there was no need to rewrite anything, I just
853 added a kboard member to tty_display_info, and initialized the
854 frame's kboard from there.)
855
856 -- Fix rif issue with X-tty combo sessions. IMHO the best thing to do
857 is to get rid of that global variable (and use the value value in
858 display_method, which is guaranteed to be correct).
859
860 (Done, did exactly that. Core dumps during combo sessions became
861 much rarer. In fact, I have not yet met a single one.)
862
863 -- Add multi-tty support to talk.el.
864
865 (Done.)
866
867 -- Clean up the source of emacsclient. It is a mess.
868
869 (Done, eliminated stupid proxy-pty kludge.)
870
871 -- Fix faces on tty frames during X-tty combo sessions. There is an
872 init_frame_faces call in init_sys_modes, see if there is a problem
873 with it.
874
875 (Done, there was a stupid mistake in
876 Ftty_supports_face_attributes_p. Colors are broken, though.)
877
878 -- C-x 5 2, C-x 5 o, C-x 5 0 on an emacsclient frame unexpectedly
879 exits emacsclient. This is a result of trying to be clever with
880 delete-frame-functions.
881
882 (Fixed, added delete-tty-after-functions, and changed server.el to
883 use it.)
884
885 -- Something with (maybe) multi-keyboard support broke function keys
886 and arrows on ttys during X+tty combo sessions. Debug this.
887
888 (I can't reproduce it, maybe the terminal type was wrong.)
889
890 -- Fix input from raw ttys (again).
891
892 (Now it seems to work all right.)
893
894 -- During an X-tty combo session, a (message "Hello") from a tty frame
895 goes to the X frame. Fix this.
896
897 (Done. There was a safeguard against writing to the initial
898 terminal frame during bootstrap which prevented echo_area_display
899 from working correctly on a tty frame during a combo session.)
900
901 -- If there are no frames on its controlling terminal, Emacs should
902 exit if the user presses C-c there.
903
904 (Done, as far as possible. See the SIGTERM comment in
905 interrupt_signal on why this seems to be impossible to solve this
906 in general.)
907
908 -- During an X session, Emacs seems to read from stdin. Also, Emacs
909 fails to start without a controlling tty.
910
911 (Fixed by replacing the troublesome termcap display with a dummy
912 bootstrap display during bootstrap.
913
914 -- Do tty output through struct display, like graphical display
915 backends.
916
917 (Done.)
918
919 -- Define an output_initial value for output_method for the initial
920 frame that is dumped with Emacs. Checking for this frame (e.g. in
921 cmd_error_internal) is ugly.
922
923 (Done, breaking interactive temacs.)
924
925 -- The command `emacsclient -t -e '(delete-frame)'' fails to exit.
926
927 (Fixed.)
928
929 -- frame-creation-function should always create a frame that is on the
930 same display as the selected frame. Maybe frame-creation-function
931 should simply be removed and make-frame changed to do the right
932 thing.
933
934 (Done, with a nice hack. frame-creation-function is now frame-local.)
935
936 -- Fix C-g on raw ttys.
937
938 (Done. I disabled the interrupt/quit keys on all secondary
939 terminals, so Emacs sees C-g as normal input. This looks like an
940 overkill, because emacsclient has extra code to pass SIGINT to
941 Emacs, so C-g should remain the interrupt/quit key on emacsclient
942 frames. See the next entry why implementing this distinction would
943 be a bad idea.)
944
945 -- Make sure C-g goes to the right frame with ttys. This is hard, as
946 SIGINT doesn't have a tty parameter. :-(
947
948 (Done, the previous change fixes this as a pleasant side effect.)
949
950 -- I have seen a case when Emacs with multiple ttys fell into a loop
951 eating 100% of CPU time. Strace showed this loop:
952
953 getpid() = 30284
954 kill(30284, SIGIO) = 0
955 --- SIGIO (I/O possible) @ 0 (0) ---
956 ioctl(6, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
957 ioctl(5, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
958 ioctl(0, FIONREAD, [0]) = 0
959 sigreturn() = ? (mask now [])
960 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747760}, NULL) = 0
961 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747806}, NULL) = 0
962 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
963 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
964 gettimeofday({1072842297, 748245}, NULL) = 0
965
966 I have seen something similar with a single X frame, but have not
967 been able to reproduce it for debugging.
968
969 Update: This may have been caused by checking for nread != 0
970 instead of nread > 0 after calling read_socket_hook in
971 read_avail_input.
972
973 (Fixed. This was caused by unconditionally including stdin in
974 input_wait_mask in init_process. The select call in
975 wait_reading_process_input always returned immediately, indicating
976 that there is pending input from stdin, which nobody read.
977
978 Note that the above strace output seems to be an unrelated but
979 similar bug. I think that is now fixed.)
980
981 -- Exiting Emacs while there are emacsclient frames doesn't restore the
982 ttys to their default states.
983
984 (This seems to be fixed by some previous change.)
985
986 -- Allow opening an X session after -nw.
987
988 (Done.)
989
990 -- Fix color handling during tty+X combo sessions. (It seems that tty
991 sessions automatically convert the face colors to terminal colors
992 when the face is loaded. This conversion must happen instead on
993 the fly in write_glyphs, which might be problematic, as color
994 approximation is currently done in lisp (term/tty-colors.el).)
995 (Update: hm, colors seem to work fine if I start emacs with -nw and
996 then create an X frame. Maybe it's just a small buglet somewhere.)
997
998 (Seems to be fixed. The problem was in startup.el, it did not
999 initialize tty colors when the initial window system was
1000 graphical.)
1001
1002 -- emacs -nw --eval '(y-or-n-p "Foobar")' segfaults. (Reported by
1003 Romain Francoise)
1004
1005 (Fixed, there was a keyboard initialization problem.)
1006
1007 -- Fix interactive use of temacs. There are face-related SEGVs, most
1008 likely because of changes in realize_default_face, realize_face.
1009
1010 (Fixed.)
1011
1012 -- Don't exit Emacs when the last X connection fails during a
1013 multi-display session.
1014
1015 (Fixed.)
1016
1017 -- Dan Nicolaescu noticed that starting emacsclient on the same
1018 terminal device that is the controlling tty of the Emacs process
1019 gives unexpected results.
1020
1021 (Fixed.)
1022
1023 -- Istvan Marko reported that Emacs hang on ttys if it was started
1024 from a shell script.
1025
1026 (Fixed. There was a bug in the multi-tty version of
1027 narrow_foreground_group. tcsetpgrp blocks if it is called from a
1028 process that is not in the same process group as the tty.)
1029
1030 -- emacsclient -t from an Emacs term buffer does not work, complains
1031 about face problems. This can even lock up Emacs (if the recursive
1032 frame sets single_kboard). Update: the face problems are caused by
1033 bugs in term.el, not in multi-tty. The lockup is caused by
1034 single_kboard mode, and is not easily resolvable. The best thing to
1035 do is to simply refuse to create a tty frame of type `eterm'.
1036
1037 (Fixed, changed emacsclient to check for TERM=eterm. The face
1038 complaints seem to be caused by bugs in term.el; they are not
1039 related to multi-tty.)
1040
1041 -- Find out the best way to support suspending Emacs with multiple
1042 ttys. My guess: disable it on the controlling tty, but from other
1043 ttys pass it on to emacsclient somehow. (It is (I hope) trivial to
1044 extend emacsclient to handle suspend/resume. A `kill -STOP' almost
1045 works right now.)
1046
1047 (Done. I needed to play with signal handling and the server
1048 protocol a bit to make emacsclient behave as a normal UNIX program
1049 wrt foreground/background process groups.)
1050
1051 -- There is a flicker during the startup of `emacs -nw'; it's as if
1052 the terminal is initialized, reset and then initialialized again.
1053 Debug this. (Hint: narrow_foreground_group is called twice during
1054 startup.)
1055
1056 (This is gone.)
1057
1058 -- Robert Chassell has found serious copy-paste bugs with the
1059 multi-tty branch. There seem to be redisplay bugs while copying
1060 from X to a terminal frame. Copying accented characters do not
1061 work for me.
1062
1063 (Patch-124 should fix this, by changing the interprogram-*-function
1064 variables to be frame-local, as suggested by Mark Plaksin
1065 (thanks!). I think that the redisplay bugs are in fact not bugs,
1066 but delays caused by single_kboard --> perhaps MULTI_KBOARD should
1067 be removed.)
1068
1069 -- frame-creation-function was removed, which might be a bad idea.
1070 Think up a compatible solution.
1071
1072 (It was an internal interface that may be changed when necessary.)
1073
1074 -- Change Lisp code not to (getenv "TERM"); use the `tty-type' frame
1075 parameter or the frame-tty-type function instead. (M-x tags-search
1076 "TERM" helps with this.) Update: Actually, all getenv invocations
1077 should be checked for multi-tty compatibility, and an interface
1078 must be implemented to get the remote client's environment.
1079
1080 (Done. Only getenv calls in lisp/term/*.el were changed; other
1081 calls should be mostly left as they are.)
1082
1083 -- Add an elaborate mechanism for display-local variables. (There are
1084 already a few of these; search for `terminal-local' in the Elisp
1085 manual.)
1086
1087 (Not needed. Display-local variables could be emulated by
1088 frame-local variables.)
1089
1090 -- Emacs assumes that all terminal frames have the same locale
1091 settings as Emacs itself. This may lead to bogus results in a
1092 multi-locale setup. (E.g., while logging in from a remote client
1093 with a different locale.)
1094 (Update after new bugreport by Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs:
1095 (at least) the structs terminal_coding and keyboard_coding in
1096 coding.c must be moved to struct display, and the Lisp interface
1097 [set-]keyboard-coding-system must be adapted for the change.)
1098
1099 (Fixed. Emacs now uses the locale settings as seen by the
1100 emacsclient process for server tty frames.)
1101 (Update: Not really; Vlocale_coding_system is still global.)
1102
1103 -- Make `struct display' accessible to Lisp programs. Accessor functions:
1104
1105 (displayp OBJECT): Returns t if OBJECT is a display.
1106 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1107
1108 (display-list): Returns list of currently active displays.
1109 => Implemented.
1110
1111 (selected-display): Returns the display object of the selected frame.
1112 => Not strictly necessary, but implemented anyway.
1113
1114 (frame-display FRAME): Returns the display object of FRAME.
1115 => Implemented.
1116
1117 (display-frames DISPLAY): Returns a list of frames on DISPLAY.
1118 => Already implemented, see frames-on-display-list.
1119
1120 (display-type DISPLAY): Returns the type of DISPLAY, as a
1121 symbol. (See `framep'.)
1122 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1123
1124 (display-device DISPLAY): Returns the name of the device that
1125 DISPLAY uses, as a string. (E.g: "/dev/pts/16", or
1126 ":0.0")
1127 => Implemented as display-name.
1128
1129 etc.
1130
1131 See next issue why this is necessary.
1132
1133 (Update: The consensus on emacs-devel seems to be to do this via
1134 integer identifiers. That's fine by me.)
1135
1136 (Done.)
1137
1138 -- The following needs to be supported:
1139
1140 $ emacsclient -t
1141 C-z
1142 $ emacsclient -t
1143 (This fails now.)
1144
1145 The cleanest way to solve this is to allow multiple displays on the
1146 same terminal device; each new emacsclient process should create
1147 its own display. As displays are currently identified by their
1148 device names, this is not possible until struct display becomes
1149 accessible as a Lisp-level object.
1150
1151 (Done.)
1152
1153 -- Miles Bader suggests that C-x C-c on an emacsclient frame should
1154 only close the frame, not exit the entire Emacs session. Update:
1155 see above for a function that does this. Maybe this should be the
1156 new default?
1157
1158 (Done. This is the new default. No complaints so far.)
1159
1160 -- Clean up the frame-local variable system. I think it's ugly and
1161 error-prone. But maybe I just haven't yet fully understood it.
1162
1163 (Nothing to do. It doesn't seem ugly any more. It's rather clever.)
1164
1165 -- Support multiple character locales. A version of
1166 `set-locale-environment' needs to be written for setting up
1167 display-local settings on ttys. I think calling
1168 set-display-table-and-terminal-coding-system and
1169 set-keyboard-coding-system would be enough. The language
1170 environment itself should remain a global setting.
1171
1172 (Done, by an ugly hack.)
1173
1174 -- The terminal customization files in term/*.el tend to change global
1175 parameters, which may confuse Emacs with multiple displays. Change
1176 them to tweak only frame-local settings, if possible. (They tend
1177 to call define-key to set function key sequences a lot.)
1178
1179 (Done, by making `function-key-map' terminal-local (i.e., part of
1180 struct kboard). This has probably covered all the remaining problems.)
1181
1182 -- Make `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' terminal-local.
1183
1184 (Done.)
1185
1186 -- Implement `terminal-local-value' and `set-terminal-local-value' to
1187 allow deterministic access to terminal local bindings. The
1188 encode-kb package can not set up `key-translation-map' without
1189 these. The terminal-local bindings seem to be independent of what
1190 frame is selected.
1191
1192 (Done.)
1193
1194 -- xt-mouse.el needs to be adapted for multi-tty. It currently
1195 signals an error on kill-emacs under X, which prevents the user
1196 from exiting Emacs. (Reported by Mnemonikk on freenode.)
1197
1198 (Done, I hope.)
1199
1200
1201 -- Having {reset,init}_all_sys_modes in set-input-mode breaks arrow
1202 keys on non-selected terminals under screen, and sometimes on other
1203 terminal types as well. The other function keys continue to work
1204 fine. Sometimes faces on these screens become garbled.
1205
1206 This only seems to affect displays that are of the same terminfo
1207 type as the selected one. Interestingly, in screen Emacs normally
1208 reports the up arrow key as `M-o A', but after the above SNAFU, it
1209 complains about `M-[ a'. UNIX ttys are a complete mystery to me,
1210 but it seems the reset-reinitialize cycle somehow leaves the
1211 non-selected terminals in a different state than usual. I have no
1212 idea how this could happen.
1213
1214 Currently set-input-mode resets only the currently selected
1215 terminal, which seems to somehow work around the problem.
1216
1217 Update:
1218
1219 Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:
1220 > Some terminals have 2 modes for cursor keys: Application Mode where
1221 > the cursor keys transmit the codes defined in the terminfo entry, and
1222 > Cursor mode. Applications have to send the smkx and rmkx terminfo
1223 > strings to switch between the 2 modes. So Emacs (and emacsclient) have
1224 > to send smkx when initializing and rmkx when quitting (or on
1225 > suspend).
1226
1227 (I think patch-370 fixed this.)
1228
1229 -- This long-standing bug (first reported by Han Boetes) seems to come
1230 and go all the time. It is time to track it down and fix it.
1231
1232 emacs
1233 M-x server-start
1234
1235 # From another xterm:
1236 emacsclient -e '(y-or-n-p "Do you want me to crash? ")'
1237 # Notice how the answer ends up in the *scratch* buffer
1238 M-x garbage-collect
1239 SIGSEGV
1240
1241 (Fixed in patch-414 after detailed analysis by Kalle Olavi Niemitalo.)
1242
1243 -- normal-erase-is-backspace-mode in simple.el needs to be updated for
1244 multi-tty (rep. by Dan Waber). (The Delete key is broken on X
1245 because of this.)
1246
1247 (Fixed in patch-427.)
1248
1249 -- I think keyboard-translate-table should be made terminal-local.
1250
1251 (Done in patch-431.)
1252
1253 -- The semantics of terminal-local variables are confusing; it is not
1254 clear what binding is in effect in any given time. See if
1255 current_kboard (or at least the terminal-local bindings exported to
1256 Lisp) might be changed to be tied to the selected frame instead.
1257 Currently, `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' may be
1258 accessed reliably only using the hackish
1259 `(set-)terminal-local-value' functions.
1260
1261 Perhaps there should be a difference between `last-command' &co.
1262 and these more conventional configuration variables.
1263 (E.g. `symbol-value' would use current_kboard to access
1264 `last-command', but SELECTED_FRAME()->display->kboard to get the
1265 value of `function-key-map'.
1266
1267 (Fixed in patch-434.)
1268
1269 -- If the first key pressed on a new tty terminal is a function key,
1270 it is not recognized correctly. May be related to the bug below.
1271
1272 (Seems to have been fixed as a side effect of patch-434. "The bug
1273 below" was the set-input-mode madness.)
1274
1275 (Update: this bug was fixed for good in patch-449. It was tracked
1276 down to a bug in `read_key_sequence': it failed to reinitialize its
1277 local function-key-map/key-translation-map references when it
1278 switched keyboards. I don't understand why did this bug only
1279 appear on brand new frames, though!)
1280
1281 ;;; arch-tag: 8da1619e-2e79-41a8-9ac9-a0485daad17d
1282