Re: screen + xterm scrollback

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Wed, 2004-07-21 at 15:02, Phil!Gregory wrote:
> Not really.  In xterm, the scrollback buffer is modeless.  It's always
> there, just a Shift-PgUp away.  In screen, the scrollback is modal.  You
> have to enter copy mode and then you can jump around in the scrollback
> buffer.  The ideal solution for Shift-PgUp and Shift-PgDn mappings in
> screen would be that if screen was not in copy mode, they would put it in
> that mode and page up or do nothing else (for page down), while if it was
> already in copy mode they would just page up and down like their unshifted
> cousins.  In any case you would have to explicitly exit copy mode when you
> were done.

That would actually be OK I think - having used vim the last three years
or so, I'm pretty used to hitting ESC all the time. I could get used to
that.

> A further subtelty is that paging up does slightly differnt things in
> xterm and screen.  xterm moves its view back a certain amount.  screen
> moves the cursor back and then adjusts the viewport to contain the
> cursor.  Depending on where the cursor is, this can lead to different
> behavior between the two.

That would be OK too - I have seen the effect of what you're saying, but
at the end of the day, hitting page-up (shift+pgup) twice to get the
first screenfull of buffer is something I think would also be pretty
easy to get used to. As you said, a subtlety.

> > Previously I mentioned that C-a a becomes tedious, well C-a [ followed
> > by some other keys (which I'm still learning) is that much more tedious.
> 
> My fingers are by now well-trained to do 'C-a ESC' (a synonym for
> 'C-a [').  Not the best answer in the world, but true.  You could use
> bindkey to dedicate a key to entering copy mode if you want to save on
> keypresses, but the fact remains that screen is modal about that, and you
> have to do something to enter that mode.

Hmm. Thanks for sharing your understanding. Knowing why makes acceptance
much easier. Not sure why, something to do with being "human" I guess.
Strange thing that (being human :)

cheers
zen