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Re: support for tty frames from windowed emacs session


From: Anthony R. Cassandra
Subject: Re: support for tty frames from windowed emacs session
Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 16:25:46 -0600

>I would like to know more specifically what functionality is
>requested here.  What qualifies as a "tty" in this regard?
>A serial port, a pty, etc?

>From any sort of non-X/windowed terminal.

>I never thought I needed this -- why is it important?

Here a common situation: I have my home machine and my work machine,
both running gnu-emacs in X, both with their own context including
normal files and especially email buffers (separate email accounts).

These are two separate contexts, as my work and email logically should
and are separated.  However, from home I want access to my work
context and from work I want access to my home context (both via ssh).
Since both these machines are behind firewalls, getting an X
connections forwarded (even with ssh) is not always easy or desirable
(such as if I want to access via an MSWindoze ssh client.)  What I
presently have to do is ensure that I have quit my email (vm) before
leaving work or leaving home because vm is quite tempermental if
another emacs session has accessed its INBOX.

I would prefer to establish my ssh connection (via an xterm, but
without X forwarded) and just connect to the running emacs on the
remote machine.  Essentially I want the same behavior as
'make-frame-on-display' gives me, only without the reliance on X.

BTW: xemacs along with gnuserv/"gnuclient -nw" gives exactly this
functionality "out-of-the-box" (my friend confirmed this last night).

>What kind of TERMINFO entry would be used for the tty?

I am not intimately familiar with all the possible terminfo and
termcap stuff aside from knowing there is a lot of cryptic syntax to
figue out and a lot of possible cases to worry about.  Personally, I'd
be happy if is just supported some basic terminal types such as what
is established via my ssh connection in the xterm.  However, the
developer side of my personality would probably not be satisfied with
a point solution, and would want to solve the whole problem.

>What about the setup of the tty (ioctls, etc)?  Shall emacs do that?

These are exactly the sorts of issues I am not currently familiar
enough with, which is why I am hoping someone with a little more
experience in these areas could give me a sort of feasibility
assessment on the effort required to add this support.

>Although there might not be _major_ technical problems, I don't think
>it will be trivial to implement.

Yes, I believe to do it properly would not be, though this is just
based on my cursory looks, and the bewilderment I experience, in
termcap files.

-tony




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