Re: Copy-scrollback mode -- VIsual feedback in window caption?

[Chris Jones]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 05:19:57AM EST, Hugo Heden wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Sadrul Habib Chowdhury <address@hidden>wrote:

> > * Hugo Heden had this to say on [10 Dec 2009, 15:31:53 +0100]:
> > > Good day all,
> > >
> > > I would like to add some visual feedback for whether a window is
> > > in copy/scrollback mode  or not, perhaps by showing a different
> > > colour in the
> > > window caption. Some other visual feedback would work too.
> >
> > Suggestions for a good *visual* feedback for this would indeed be
> > welcome.
> >

> Suggestion, sort of: Make it possible to change the colour of (or
> change the string in, or do whatever with) the *window caption* when
> copy-scrollback-mode is in effect.

> (I usually use a blue window caption, but it'd be lovely if I could
> make is so that it was green whenever copy-scrollback-mode was in
> effect. The reason is that I use scrollback pretty extensively,
> looking for logged data in big terminal print-outs. And sometimes when
> I'm back from getting a cup of coffe, I sort of forget that the window
> is in copy-scrollback-mode, so I start typing -- and the window exits
> copy-scroll-back-mode, and I realize that I just lost the valuable
> scrolling position that I had spent ten minutes searching for.. 

That must be rather annoying ;-)

But the problem about the visual feedback is that unless it is something
really disruptive, you could just as well forget to look. 

Another way of looking at this would be to have screen keep track of the
state of your previous copy-scrollback session, so that if you
inadvertenly bailed out, starting a new one would by default take you
back to where you were - or have a new 'copy-recall' command to take
care of this , if you feel that this might interfere with the existing
behavior (?)

> Not sure this sounds like an obscure use case.. But I would love it if
> I could configure some visual feedback for when being in
> copy-scroll-back-mode.)

Otherwise, if you really feel visual feedback is a good idea, I guess a
permanent blinking message in reverse video in the current status area
would probably do the trick and cover all the bases, even for thos who
do no use a caption/status line (?) 

CJ