Re: TTY display trouble

[Devon Sean McCullough]

   From: "Richard M. Stallman" <address@hidden>
   CC: address@hidden
   Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 21:43:01 -0400

       The fix is to scroll the emacs command line off the top at initial
       startup and suspend resume, before any mode line or text redisplay.
       Newlines are best because clear screen fails to preserve scroll back

   Would simply outputting a number of newlines equal to the screen height
   do the job?  If that would work, we can easily do it.

Yes, in place of the termcap:ti string emacs apparently outputs now,
which selects the "Alternate Screen Buffer" with the side effect of
excluding emacs screens from the terminal scroll back buffer.
Therefore this should be a user choice.

                Peace
                        --Devon

PS: EMACS uses the alt screen when I enable it in GNU SCREEN
although TCONV reports no such capability, I'm baffled.

The alt screen feature is disabled by default in GNU SCREEN
and absent from the termcap/terminfo databases in FreeBSD and MacOS.
Unix manuals, however, assume "cup" (cursor-positioning) programs use it.

SCREEN(1)                                                            SCREEN(1)
       altscreen on|off

TERMCAP(5)                FreeBSD File Formats Manual               TERMCAP(5)
     enter_ca_mode           ti      string to start programs using 
cursor_address
     exit_ca_mode            te      strings to end programs using cup
     non_rev_rmcup           NR      enter_ca_mode does not reverse exit_ca_mode

TERMINFO(5)                File Formats               TERMINFO(5)
       enter_ca_mode             smcup  ti   string to start programs using cup
       exit_ca_mode              rmcup  te   strings to end programs using cup
       non_rev_rmcup             nrrmc NR    smcup does not reverse rmcup

;;; Video Terminal VT-100/XTERM escape codes

(defvar vt-screen-alternate-buffer-string "\e[?47h"
  "Video Terminal command to use Alternate Screen Buffer.")

(defvar vt-screen-normal-buffer-string "\e[?47l"
  "Video Terminal command to use Normal Screen Buffer.")

(defun vt-screen-snapshot ()
  "Append an emacs screen snapshot to the terminal scrollback buffer."
  (send-string-to-terminal vt-screen-alternate-buffer-string)
  (send-string-to-terminal (make-string (screen-height) ?\n))
  (redraw-frame (selected-frame))
  (send-string-to-terminal vt-screen-normal-buffer-string)
  (redraw-frame (selected-frame)))

(defun vt-screen-alternate-hook ()
  (send-string-to-terminal vt-screen-alternate-buffer-string))

(defun vt-screen-normal-hook ()
  (send-string-to-terminal vt-screen-normal-buffer-string))