Re: now 2.7.1ac-0.36 (was Re: LYNX-DEV Request) (fwd)

[Klaus Weide]

On Sat, 19 Jul 1997, Foteos Macrides wrote:

>       For about a week now, nothing will build properly with curses on
> Scott's SPARC, I suspect due to messed up system headers from an ncurses
> installation, which also messed up the headers for it's native curses
> library.  I sent Scott a message about this, but perhaps waited too long.

Yes, some files were installed inappropriately when Tom recently installed
his ncurses 4.1 on Scott's machine.  (If I recall correctly, this also
happened when he installed ncurses 4.0 a while ago).  He has fixed it this
morning.  I just did a test build without --with-screen=anything.

>       When I do just "configure" and then "make generic", for using the
> native "solaris2" curses package with the -36 development code set, I get
> an unresolved global error for mousemask, which appears to be an ncurses
> library function or macro.  That means NCURSES_MOUSE_VERSION got defined
> when it should not have during the autoconf.  If I fix that up via a
> temporary hack in LYCurses.c, I can get -36 built, but the character
> attribute handling is messed up (again, I suspect due to messed up system
> headers).  When a color terminal is used, you'd expect that to be messed
> up too.

It works now, as far as I can see (except for the popup problem, see
below).

>       Hiram raised this issue a while ago, but it is yet to be addressed.
> The autoconf is checking system capabilies, and setting up the build solely
> based on those, without also providing a means for taking into account
> lesser terminal capabilities at run time.  You see the consequences of this
> (probably unwitting) change in design principles most dramatically in the
> case of color handling.  If the system has color curses capability, then
> the image will be built with that capability, and if you invoke that image
> without a color terminal, you're up the creek without a paddle.  

???

I just built three versions of the 2.7.1ac-0.36 code set on Scott's
solaris machine - with slang, with ncurses (4.1), and with the native
curses.  All three binaries support color, since the three libraries do.
All three fall back to using reasonable mono attributes when used with
a non-color terminal type (tested with -term=vt100, terminal is a linux
console), for document text.  The difference between the slang binary and
the other two is that the first uses reverse+underline for the selected
link, the other two use only reverse. ("underline" doesn't appear as
underlining on my screen, but that's a different story and I have factored
it out.)  There are differences for the status line (see below) and
possibly on the options screen, but mostly the downgrading works, in
my observation.

What we don't have is downgrading support a terminal which doesn't
understand any attributes, or just standout()/standend(), with the same
binary, but then that isn't in 2.7.1 or fotemods either AFAIK - except
via show_curser, which is there.

> Back when
> John did the original slang port, he included the -color switch to address
> this problem (which I agree should also be in the options menu, now that so
> many, but not all, Lynxers have color terminals).  But there's nothing of
> that sort, nor effective automatic handling of this at run time, in the
> color curses port.

As observed, there is, and it works for me.  The original slang port
doesn't provide any more in this respect, for downgrading to a
less-capable terminal.  It has a -color flag, but it doesn't have
a -no_color switch.

> Moreover, it has messed up the situation for slang,
> so that if you connect with a non-color terminal, you don't get reverse
> for the statusline messages even with a slang built image and the -color
> switch not set.

Well, I do get reverse for the statusline, with the slang binary and
-term=vt100.  (What terminal type are you using?)  It is the other
two binaries where I don't get any emphasis for the statusline, and
that should be corrected.

>       The good news is that the popup stuff was merged essentially as is
> into LYOptions.c, and if I do a temporary hack to fix up the bad statusline
> handling, and then use "configure --with_screen=slang", the popups work
> as in the fotemods with proper character attribute handling, so I suspect
> the problems you describe will go away when the curses color port is thought
> through and fixed up (plus whatever got messed up on Scott's SPARC should
> be fixed).

Not all problems have gone away.  Here are the problems I observe.
"linux" is a term type which supports color, "vt100" is a term type
which doesn't support color, according to the terminfo files.


library / TERM       popup in FORM        popup in Options Screen
==============       =============        =======================

curses / linux       COLOR + BORDER       COLOR + BORDER

curses / vt100       Ok                   Ok

ncurses / linux      Ok                   COLOR

ncurses / vt100      Ok                   Ok

slang  / linux       Ok                   Ok

slang  / vt100       Ok                   Ok

"BORDER" means: (with BOXHORI and BOXVERT set to 0")
In the place where the box line-drawing characters should be,
I get y-umlaut characters (character 255, hex FF) on the screen.

(Speculation: the system curses on sol doesn't understand the
binary format of the /usr/local/lib/l/linux terminfo file.)

"COLOR" means:  There are inconsistent color changes.
When the popup first appears, lines other than the current one are
shown white-on-black.  The selected line is yellow-on-blue (This
is with the default colors, no change in lynx.cfg.) [except for the
number in the case of the Options Screen which is white-on-black.]  
After moving the selection, the now unselected line is black-on-white.
[In the case of Options Screen popup, the number on the now selected
line also has turned white-on-black].  Moving to an item within the
popup with the "12g" command turns all lines white-on-black.  However,
the spaces (one each before and after the text) always stay black.

I hope Tom will look into this (and make things work not just with
ncurses 4.x).  I am not sending the terminfo files since Tom has 
acces to the same ones I am using.

    Klaus

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