Re: M-x gdb on a tty

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:29:03 +1200
> Cc: address@hidden
> From: address@hidden (Nick Roberts)
> 
> Eli Zaretskii writes:
>  > Is "M-x gdb" supposed to work correctly on a tty?
> 
> Are there problems apart from those with the menu-bar?

I didn't see any yet.  But this is stock Emacs 23.1, so if you were
interested in the CVS version, I didn't try it (yet).

>  > If it is, then I think I see some issues with the menu bar: portions
>  > of it seem to get overwritten by GUD-specific strings that have a
>  > different background color (perhaps a distant memory of the tool
>  > bar?), when I am in the GUD buffer.
> 
> I did put this in FOR-RELEASE (2008-03-01 1.764):
> 
>  ** Mouse clicks on the menubar don't currently work with a console
>  Following the direct use of Gpm, the menubar now needs to be
>  considered a special part of the screen in Emacs on a console.
>  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-06/msg00277.html

I didn't expect the mouse to work there: this is a real text terminal
(SSH remote login to a GNU/Linux system), not an xterm with Gpm.  My
problem is that the menu bar gets partially overwritten with items
that don't look like menu-bar items: they start with a lower-case
letter.  Also, they have a different background color, which looks
ugly.  Is there a point for them to have a different look?  If not, I
suggest to make them look and feel like normal menu items.

Also, it looks like the code which produces these menu items does not
take the GUD arrow into consideration: switching to the source buffer
where the arrow is displayed causes these menu items to move right by
one character, exposing a letter ("C" in my case) beneath it.  This
again looks like a bug, even if it's a feature.

Finally, these menu items obscure the normal ones.

> The green part of the menu bar *does* work like a tool bar if you try it in an
> xterm.  When I implemented Gpm functionality at the C level in Emacs (for
> mouse highlighting and tool tips) I got it to work in the normal window area
> and mode line but not the menu bar.

If this feature is supposed to work only with a mouse, and makes sense
in that case, then how about turning off the feature when the mouse is
not available?  For that matter, how about making it customizable even
if the mouse is available?  (Apologies if it's already customizable: I
didn't have time to look it up.)