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1 -*- coding: utf-8; mode: text; -*-
2 GOAL
3 ----
4
5 This branch implements support for opening multiple, different tty
6 devices and simultaneous X and tty frames from a single Emacs session.
7
8 Some use cases:
9 Emacs is notoriously slow at startup, so most people use another
10 editor or emacsclient for quick editing jobs from the console.
11 Unfortunately, emacsclient was very awkward to use, because it did not
12 support opening a new Emacs frame on the current virtual console.
13 Now, with multi-tty support, it can do that. (Emacsclient starts up
14 faster than vi!)
15
16 Some Gnus users (including me) run Gnus in an X frame in its own Emacs
17 instance, which they typically leave running for weeks. It would be
18 nice if they could connect to this instance from a remote ssh session
19 and check their messages without opening a remote X frame or resorting
20 to gnus-slave.
21
22 WHO IS DOING IT
23 ---------------
24
25 I'm Károly Lőrentey. My address: lorentey@elte.hu.
26
27 Comments, bug reports, suggestions and patches are welcome; send them
28 to multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu.
29
30 The following is a (sadly incomplete) list of people who have
31 contributed to the project by testing, submitting patches, bug
32 reports, and suggestions. Thanks!
33
34 ARISAWA Akihiro <ari at mbf dot ocn dot ne dot jp>
35 Vincent Bernat <bernat at luffy dot cx>
36 Han Boetes <han at mijncomputer dot nl>
37 Robert J. Chassell <bob at rattlesnake dot com>
38 Romain Francoise <romain at orebokech dot com>
39 Ami Fischman <ami at fischman dot org>
40 Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs <friedel at nomaden dot org>
41 IRIE Tetsuya <irie at t dot email dot ne dot jp>
42 Yoshiaki Kasahara <kasahara at nc dot kyushu-u dot ac dot jp>
43 Jurej Kubelka <Juraj dot Kubelka at email dot cz>
44 David Lichteblau <david at lichteblau dot com>
45 Xavier Mallard <zedek at gnu-rox dot org>
46 Istvan Marko <mi-mtty at kismala dot com>
47 Ted Morse <morse at ciholas dot com>
48 Dan Nicolaescu <dann at ics dot uci dot edu>
49 Gergely Nagy <algernon at debian dot org>
50 Mark Plaksin <happy at mcplaksin dot org>
51 Francisco Borges <borges at let dot rug dot nl>
52 Frank Ruell <stoerte at dreamwarrior dot net>
53 Dan Waber <dwaber at logolalia dot com>
54 and many others.
55
56 Richard Stallman was kind enough to review an earlier version of my
57 patches.
58
59
60 MAILING LISTS
61 -------------
62
63 The multi-tty mailing list (discussion & bug reports):
64
65 Address: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
66 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty
67 Archive: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.multi-tty/
68
69 Commit notifications (read-only):
70
71 Address: multi-tty-commits@lists.fnord.hu
72 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty-commits
73
74
75 STATUS
76 ------
77
78 The branch is now very stable and almost full-featured. All of the
79 major problems have been fixed, only a few minor issues remain. (It
80 still needs to be ported to Windows/Mac/DOS, though.) Both multiple
81 tty device support and simultaneous X and tty frame support works
82 fine. Emacsclient has been extended to support opening new tty and X
83 frames. It has been changed open new Emacs frames by default.
84
85 The multi-tty branch has been scheduled for inclusion in the next
86 major release of Emacs (version 23). I expect the merge into the
87 development trunk to occur sometime during next year (2005), after the
88 merge of the Unicode branch.
89
90 Tested on GNU/Linux, Solaris 8, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Please let me
91 know if you succeed or fail to use it on other platforms---I'll have a
92 few tricky test cases for you.
93
94 Known problems:
95
96 * GTK support. If you compile your Emacs with the GTK
97 toolkit, some functionality of multi-tty will be lost.
98 In particular, closing an X display causes a crash.
99 Current releases of GTK have limitations and bugs that
100 prevent full-blown multi-display support in Emacs. Use the
101 Lucid toolkit if you want to see a complete feature set.
102
103 * The single-kboard mode.
104
105 If your multi-tty Emacs session seems to be frozen, you
106 probably have a recursive editing session or a pending
107 minibuffer prompt (which is a kind of recursive editing) on
108 another display. To unfreeze your session, switch to that
109 display and complete the recursive edit, for example by
110 pressing C-] (`abort-recursive-edit').
111
112 I am sorry to say that currently there is no way to break
113 out of this "single-kboard mode" from a frozen display. If
114 you are unable to switch to the display that locks the
115 others (for example because it is on a remote computer),
116 then you can use emacsclient to break out of all recursive
117 editing sessions:
118
119 emacsclient -e '(top-level)'
120
121 Note that this (perhaps) unintuitive behaviour is by design.
122 Single-kboard mode is required because of an intrinsic Emacs
123 limitation that is very hard to eliminate. (This limitation
124 is related to the single-threaded nature of Emacs.)
125
126 I plan to implement better user notification and support for
127 breaking out of single-kboard mode from locked displays.
128
129 * Mac, Windows and DOS support is broken, doesn't even
130 compile. Multiple display support will probably not provide
131 new Emacs features on these systems, but the multi-tty
132 branch changed a few low-level interfaces, and the
133 system-dependent source files need to be adapted
134 accordingly. The changes are mostly trivial, so almost
135 anyone can help, if only by compiling the branch and
136 reporting the compiler errors. (It is not worth to do this
137 yet, though.)
138
139
140 HOW TO GET THE BRANCH
141 ---------------------
142
143 The branch uses GNU Arch (http://www.gnuarch.org) for version control.
144
145 Retrieving the latest version of the branch:
146
147 tla register-archive -f http://lorentey.hu/arch/2004/
148 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
149
150 This incantation uses my private archive mirror that is hosted on a
151 relatively low-bandwidth site; if you are outside Hungary, you will
152 probably want to you use my secondary mirror: (Note that the -f option
153 will overwrite the archive location if you have previously registered
154 the Hungarian one.)
155
156 tla register-archive -f http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/arch/2004
157 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
158
159 http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/arch/2004
160
161 The Arch supermirror provides mirroring services for all public Arch
162 repositories. We have a mirror there, too, if you prefer.
163
164 tla register-archive -f http://mirrors.sourcecontrol.net/lorentey%40elte.hu--2004
165 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
166
167 My GPG key id is 0FB27A3F; it is available from
168 hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net/, or from my homepage at
169 http://lorentey.hu/rolam/gpg.html)
170
171 Don't worry if the above checkout takes a few minutes to complete;
172 once you have a source tree, updating it to the latest revision will
173 be _much_ faster. Use the following command for the update:
174
175 tla replay
176
177 You can find more information about Arch on http://wiki.gnuarch.org/.
178 It's a wonderful source control system, I highly recommend it.
179
180 If you don't have tla, the branch has a homepage from which you can
181 download conventional patches against Emacs CVS HEAD:
182
183 http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.html
184
185 DEBIAN PACKAGES
186 ---------------
187
188 If you run Debian, or a distribution based on Debian, you are welcome
189 to use our binary packages; put these lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list:
190
191 # Multi-tty Emacs
192 deb http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt ./
193 deb-src http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt ./
194
195 Note that these packages are intended solely to provide an easy way to
196 test the new multi-tty features. They are not to be taken as Emacs
197 releases, and it's a mistake to expect robust operation or any kind of
198 timely support for them. Do not install them, unless you'd like to
199 have your editor crash on you.
200
201
202 COMPILATION
203 -----------
204
205 The multi-tty branch is compiled the same way as Emacs itself:
206
207 make maintainer-clean # (If you have compiled Emacs before)
208
209 ./configure <your favourite options>
210 make bootstrap
211 make install
212
213 If you have strange compilation errors, they may be caused by old
214 *.elc files that are left over from an earlier bootstrap. The `make
215 maintainer-clean' target deletes them, so it is a good idea to run
216 that before reporting a bug. (Emacs requires a clean recompilation
217 after certain kinds of source code changes.)
218
219 TESTING
220 -------
221
222 To test the multi-tty branch, start up the Emacs server with the
223 following commands:
224
225 emacs
226 M-x server-start
227
228 and then (from a shell prompt on another terminal) start emacsclient
229 with
230 emacsclient -t /optional/file/names... (for a tty frame)
231 emacsclient /optional/file/names... (for an X frame)
232
233 (Make sure both emacs and emacsclient are multi-tty versions.)
234 You'll hopefully have two fully working, independent frames on
235 separate terminals. The new frame is closed automatically when you
236 finish editing the specified files (C-x #), but delete-frame (C-x 5 0)
237 also works. Of course, you can create frames on more than two tty
238 devices.
239
240 Creating new frames on the same tty with C-x 5 2 works, and they
241 behave the same way as in previous Emacs versions. If you exit emacs,
242 all terminals should be restored to their previous states.
243
244 This is work in progress, and probably full of bugs. It is a good
245 idea to run emacs from gdb, so that you'll have a live instance to
246 debug if something goes wrong. Please send me your bug reports on our
247 mailing list: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
248
249 TIPS & TRICKS
250 -------------
251
252 I think the best way to use the new Emacs is to have it running inside
253 a disconnected GNU screen session, and always use emacsclient for
254 normal work. One advantage of this is that not a single keystroke of
255 your work will be lost if the display device that you are using
256 crashes, or the network connection times out, or whatever. (I had an
257 extremely unstable X server for some time while I was developing these
258 patches, and running Emacs this way has saved me a number of M-x
259 recover-session invocations.)
260
261 I use the following two bash scripts to handle my Emacs sessions:
262
263 -------------------------------------------------------connect-emacs--
264 #!/bin/bash
265 # Usage: connect-emacs <name> <args>...
266 #
267 # Connects to the Emacs instance called NAME. Starts up the instance
268 # if it is not already running. The rest of the arguments are passed
269 # to emacsclient.
270
271 name="$1"
272 shift
273
274 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
275 echo "Usage: connect_emacs <name> <args>..." >&2
276 exit 1
277 fi
278 preload-emacs "$name" wait
279 /usr/bin/emacsclient.emacs-multi-tty -s "$name" "$@"
280 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
281
282 -------------------------------------------------------preload-emacs--
283 #!/bin/bash
284 # Usage: preload-emacs <name> [<waitp>]
285 #
286 # Preloads the Emacs instance called NAME in a detached screen
287 # session. Does nothing if the instance is already running. If WAITP
288 # is non-empty, the function waits until the server starts up and
289 # creates its socket; otherwise it returns immediately.
290
291 name="$1"
292 waitp="$2"
293 screendir="/var/run/screen/S-$USER"
294 serverdir="/tmp/emacs$UID"
295 emacs=/usr/bin/emacs-multi-tty # Or wherever you installed your multi-tty Emacs
296
297 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
298 echo "Usage: preload_emacs <name> [<waitp>]" >&2
299 exit 1
300 fi
301
302 if [ ! -e "$screendir"/*."$name" ]; then
303 if [ -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; then
304 # Delete leftover socket (for the wait option)
305 rm "$serverdir/$name"
306 fi
307 screen -dmS "$name" "$emacs" -nw --eval "(setq server-name \"$name\")" -f server-start
308 fi
309 if [ ! -z "$waitp" ]; then
310 while [ ! -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; do sleep 0.1; done
311 fi
312 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
313
314 I have the following in my profile to have two instances automatically
315 preloaded for editing and email:
316
317 preload-emacs editor
318 preload-emacs gnus
319
320 It is useful to set up short aliases for connect-emacs. I use the
321 following:
322
323 alias edit="connect-emacs editor"
324 alias e=edit
325 alias et="connect-emacs editor -t"
326 alias gnus="connect-emacs gnus"
327
328
329 CHANGELOG
330 ---------
331
332 See arch logs.
333
334
335 NEWS
336 ----
337
338 For the NEWS file: (Needs much, much work)
339
340 ** Support for multiple terminal devices has been added.
341
342 *** You can specify a terminal device (`tty' parameter) and a terminal
343 type (`tty-type' parameter) to `make-terminal-frame'.
344
345 *** You can test for the presence of multiple terminal support by
346 testing for the `multi-tty' feature.
347
348 *** Emacsclient has been extended to support opening a new terminal
349 frame. Its behaviour has been changed to open a new Emacs frame by
350 default. Use the -c option to get the old behavior of opening
351 files in the currently selected Emacs frame.
352
353 *** A make-frame-on-tty function has been added to make it easier to
354 create frames on new terminals.
355
356 *** New functions: frame-tty-name, frame-tty-type, delete-tty,
357 terminal-local-value, set-terminal-local-value
358
359 terminal-id, terminal-parameters, terminal-parameter,
360 set-terminal-parameter
361
362 *** New variables: global-key-translation-map
363
364 *** The keymaps key-translation-map and function-key-map are now
365 terminal-local.
366
367 ** Support for simultaneous graphical and terminal frames has been
368 added.
369
370 *** The function `make-frame-on-display' now works during a terminal
371 session, and `make-frame-on-tty' works during a graphical session.
372
373 *** The `window-system' variable has been made frame-local.
374
375 *** The new `initial-window-system' variable contains the
376 `window-system' value for the first frame.
377
378 *** talk.el has been extended for multiple tty support.
379
380
381 * * *
382
383 (The rest of this file consists of my development notes and as such it
384 is probably not very interesting for anyone else.)
385
386 THINGS TO DO
387 ------------
388
389 ** Dan Nicolaescu writes:
390 > The terminal initialization code still has some issues.
391 > This can be seen when using emacsclient -t on a 256 color xterm. The
392 > terminal frame is only created with 8 color.
393 > The reason is that terminal-init-xterm calls
394 > xterm-register-default-colors which calls (display-color-cells (selected-frame))
395 > and probably `selected-frame' is not completely setup at that time.
396
397 ** emacsclient --no-wait and --eval is currently broken.
398
399 ** xt-mouse.el needs to be adapted for multi-tty. It currently
400 signals an error on kill-emacs under X, which prevents the user
401 from exiting Emacs. (Reported by Mnemonikk on freenode.)
402
403 ** The handling of lisp/term/*.el, and frame creation in general, is a
404 big, big mess. How come the terminal-specific file is loaded by
405 tty-create-frame-with-faces? I don't think it is necessary to load
406 these files for each frame; once per terminal should be enough.
407
408 ** Fix frame-set-background-mode in this branch. It was recently
409 changed in CVS, and frame.el in multi-tty has not yet been adapted
410 for the changes. (It needs to look at
411 default-frame-background-mode.)
412
413 ** I think `(set-)terminal-local-value' and the terminal parameter
414 mechanism should be integrated into a single framework.
415
416 ** Add the following hooks: after-delete-frame-hook (for server.el,
417 instead of delete-frame-functions),
418 after-delete-terminal-functions, after-create-terminal-functions.
419
420 ** Having {reset,init}_all_sys_modes in set-input-mode breaks arrow
421 keys on non-selected terminals under screen, and sometimes on other
422 terminal types as well. The other function keys continue to work
423 fine. Sometimes faces on these screens become garbled.
424
425 This only seems to affect displays that are of the same terminfo
426 type as the selected one. Interestingly, in screen Emacs normally
427 reports the up arrow key as `M-o A', but after the above SNAFU, it
428 complains about `M-[ a'. UNIX ttys are a complete mystery to me,
429 but it seems the reset-reinitialize cycle somehow leaves the
430 non-selected terminals in a different state than usual. I have no
431 idea how this could happen.
432
433 Currently set-input-mode resets only the currently selected
434 terminal, which seems to somehow work around the problem.
435
436 ** Fix set-input-mode for multi-tty. It's a truly horrible interface;
437 what if we'd blow it up into several separate functions (with a
438 compatibility definition)?
439
440 ** BULK RENAME: The `display-' prefix of new Lisp-level functions
441 conflicts with stuff like `display-time-mode'. Use `device-'
442 or `terminal-' instead. I think I prefer `terminal-'.
443
444 It turns out that most of the offending Lisp functions were defined
445 in the trunk. Therefore, compatibility aliases should be defined
446 for the following names:
447
448 display-color-cells terminal-color-cells
449 display-color-p terminal-color-p
450 display-graphic-p terminal-graphic-p
451 display-grayscale-p terminal-grayscale-p
452 display-images-p terminal-images-p
453 display-mm-height terminal-mm-height
454 display-mm-width terminal-mm-width
455 display-mouse-p terminal-mouse-p
456 display-multi-font-p terminal-multi-font-p
457 display-multi-frame-p terminal-multi-frame-p
458 display-pixel-height terminal-pixel-height
459 display-pixel-width terminal-pixel-width
460 display-pixels-per-inch terminal-pixels-per-inch
461 display-planes terminal-planes
462 display-popup-menus-p terminal-popup-menus-p
463 display-save-under terminal-save-under
464 display-screens terminal-screens
465 display-supports-face-attributes-p terminal-supports-face-attributes-p
466 display-visual-class terminal-visual-class
467 framep-on-display framep-on-terminal
468 frames-on-display-list frames-on-terminal-list
469
470 The following functions were introduced in the multi-tty branch, and
471 can be renamed without aliases:
472
473 display-controlling-tty-p terminal-controlling-tty-p
474 display-list terminal-list
475 display-live-p terminal-live-p
476 display-name terminal-name
477 display-tty-type terminal-tty-type
478 frame-display terminal-of-frame
479 delete-display delete-terminal
480
481 ** The semantics of terminal-local variables are confusing; it is not
482 clear what binding is in effect in any given time. See if
483 current_kboard (or at least the terminal-local bindings exported to
484 Lisp) might be changed to be tied to the selected frame instead.
485 Currently, `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' may be
486 accessed reliably only using the hackish
487 `(set-)terminal-local-value' functions.
488
489 Perhaps there should be a difference between `last-command' &co.
490 and these more conventional configuration variables.
491 (E.g. `symbol-value' would use current_kboard to access
492 `last-command', but SELECTED_FRAME()->display->kboard to get the
493 value of `function-key-map'.
494
495 ** The single-keyboard mode of MULTI_KBOARD is extremely confusing
496 sometimes; Emacs does not respond to stimuli from other keyboards.
497 At least a beep or a message would be important, if the single-mode
498 is still required to prevent interference. (Reported by Dan
499 Nicolaescu.)
500
501 Update: selecting a region with the mouse enables single_kboard
502 under X. This is very confusing.
503
504 Update: After discussions with Richard Stallman, this will be
505 resolved by having locked displays warn the user to wait, and
506 introducing a complex protocol to remotely bail out of
507 single-kboard mode by pressing C-g.
508
509 Update: Warning the user is not trivial to implement, as Emacs has
510 only one echo area, shared by all frames. Ideally the warning
511 should not be displayed on the display that is locking the others.
512 Perhaps the high probability of user confusion caused by
513 single_kboard mode deserves a special case in the display code.
514 Alternatively, it might be good enough to signal single_kboard mode
515 by changing the modelines or some other frame-local display element
516 on the locked out displays.
517
518 ** The session management module is prone to crashes when the X
519 connection is closed and then later I try to connect to a new X
520 session:
521
522 #0 0xb7ebc806 in SmcGetIceConnection () from /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6
523 #1 0x080e6641 in x_session_check_input (bufp=0xbf86c9c0) at xsmfns.c:144
524 #2 0x080d3bbc in XTread_socket (device=0xa722ff8, expected=1, hold_quit=0xbf86ca90) at xterm.c:7037
525 #3 0x080fa404 in read_avail_input (expected=1) at keyboard.c:6696
526 #4 0x080fa4ca in handle_async_input () at keyboard.c:6900
527 #5 0x080d51fa in x_term_init (display_name=162628899, xrm_option=0x0, resource_name=0x857068c "emacs") at xterm.c:10622
528 #6 0x080d920e in x_display_info_for_name (name=162628899) at xfns.c:3975
529 #7 0x080d92f9 in check_x_display_info (object=1) at xfns.c:274
530 #8 0x080d97b8 in Fx_create_frame (parms=151221485) at xfns.c:3016
531 #9 0x0815bf72 in Ffuncall (nargs=2, args=0xbf86ceec) at eval.c:2851
532
533 I installed a workaround to prevent this. The X session manager is
534 only contacted when the very first display in the Emacs session is
535 an X display. Also, x_delete_display() on this display aborts
536 session management, and XTread_socket only calls
537 x_session_check_input when it is called for the display that the
538 session was opened on. While this does not really fix the bug, it
539 makes it much less frequent, because session manager support will
540 not normally be enabled when Emacs can survive the shutdown of the
541 X server.
542
543 See if xsmfns.c should be updated.
544
545 ** normal-erase-is-backspace-mode in simple.el needs to be updated for
546 multi-tty (rep. by Dan Waber).
547
548 ** Hunt down display-related functions in frame.el and extend them all
549 to accept display ids.
550
551 ** rif->flush_display_optional (NULL) calls should be replaced by a
552 new global function.
553
554 ** The set-locale-environment hack (adding the DISPLAY option) should
555 be replaced with a clean design.
556
557 ** standard-display-table should be display-local.
558 standard-display-european should be display-local.
559
560 ** With iswitchb-default-method set to 'always-frame, only frames on
561 the current display should be considered. This might involve
562 extending `get-buffer-window'.
563
564 ** Have a look at Vlocale_coding_system. Seems like it would be a
565 tedious job to localize it, although most references use it for
566 interfacing with libc and are therefore OK with the global
567 definition.
568
569 Exceptions found so far: x-select-text and
570 x-cut-buffer-or-selection-value.
571
572 ** Have a look at fatal_error_hook.
573
574 ** Have a look at set_frame_matrix_frame.
575
576 ** Check if we got term-setup-hook right.
577
578 ** I think tip_frame should be display-local.
579
580 ** Check display reference count handling in x_create_tip_frame.
581
582 ** make-frame does not correctly handle extra parameters in its
583 argument:
584
585 (frame-parameter (make-frame (list (cons 'foobar 42))) 'foobar)
586 => nil
587
588 (This is likely an error in the CVS trunk.)
589
590 ** Dan Nicolaescu suggests that -nw should be added as an alias for -t
591 in emacsclient. Good idea. (Alas, implementing this is not
592 trivial, getopt_long does not seem to support two-letter ``short''
593 options. Patches are welcome.) :-)
594
595 ** Mark Plaksin suggests that emacsclient should accept the same
596 X-related command-line arguments as Emacs. Most of the X-related
597 argument-handling is done in Lisp, so this should be quite easy to
598 implement.
599
600 ** Gergely Nagy suggests that C-x # should only kill the current
601 frame, not any other emacsclient frame that may have the same file
602 opened for editing. I think I agree with him.
603
604 ** Very strange bug: visible-bell does not work on secondary
605 terminals in xterm and konsole. The screen does flicker a bit,
606 but it's so quick it isn't noticable.
607
608 ** Move baud_rate to struct display.
609
610 ** Implement support for starting an interactive Emacs session without
611 an initial frame. (The user would connect to it and open frames
612 later, with emacsclient.)
613
614 ** Fix Mac support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
615 current state of Mac-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
616 are not useful; before starting work on Mac support, revert to
617 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
618
619 ** Fix W32 support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
620 current state of W32-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
621 are not useful; before starting work on W32 support, revert to
622 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
623
624 ** Fix DOS support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
625 current state of DOS-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
626 are not useful; before starting work on DOS support, revert to
627 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
628
629 ** Do a grep on XXX and ?? for more issues.
630
631 ** Understand Emacs's low-level input system (it's black magic) :-)
632 What exactly does interrupt_input do? I tried to disable it for
633 raw secondary tty support, but it does not seem to do anything
634 useful. (Update: Look again. X unconditionally enables this, maybe
635 that's why raw terminal support is broken again. I really do need
636 to understand input.)
637
638 ** Fix stuff_char for multi-tty. Doesn't seem to be of high priority.
639
640 DIARY OF CHANGES
641 ----------------
642
643 (ex-TODO items with explanations.)
644
645 -- Introduce a new struct for terminal devices.
646
647 (Done, see struct tty_output. The list of members is not yet
648 complete.)
649
650 -- Change the bootstrap procedure to initialize tty_list.
651
652 (Done, but needs review.)
653
654 -- Change make-terminal-frame to support specifying another tty.
655
656 (Done, new frame parameters: `tty' and `tty-type'.)
657
658 -- Implement support for reading from multiple terminals.
659
660 (Done, read_avail_input tries to read from each terminal, until one
661 succeeds. MULTI_KBOARD is not used. Secondary terminals don't send
662 SIGIO!)
663
664 (Update: They do, now.)
665
666 (Update2: After enabling X, they don't.)
667
668 -- other-frame should cycle through the frames on the `current'
669 terminal only.
670
671 (Done, by trivially modifiying next_frame and prev_frame.)
672
673 -- Support different terminal sizes.
674
675 (Done, no problem.)
676
677 -- Make sure terminal resizes are handled gracefully. (Could be
678 problematic.)
679
680 (Done. We don't get automatic SIGWINCH for additional ttys,
681 though.)
682
683 -- Extend emacsclient to automatically open a new tty when it connects
684 to Emacs.
685
686 (Done. It's an ugly hack, needs more work.)
687
688 -- Redisplay must refresh the topmost frame on *all* terminals, not
689 just the initial terminal.
690
691 (Done, but introduced an ugly redisplay problems. Ugh.)
692
693 -- Fix redisplay problems.
694
695 (Done; it turned out that the entire Wcm structure must be moved
696 inside tty_output. Why didn't I catch this earlier?)
697
698 -- Provide a way for emacsclient to tell Emacs that the tty has been
699 resized.
700
701 (Done, simply forward the SIGWINCH signal.)
702
703 -- Each keypress should automatically select the frame corresponding
704 to the terminal that it was coming from. This means that Emacs
705 must know from which terminal the last keyboard event came from.
706
707 (Done, it was quite simple, the input event system already
708 supported multiple frames.)
709
710 -- Fix SIGIO issue with secondary terminals.
711
712 (Done, emacsclient signals Emacs after writing to the proxy pseudo
713 terminal. Note that this means that multi-tty does not work with
714 raw ttys!)
715
716 (Update: This is bullshit. There is a read_input_waiting function,
717 extend that somehow.)
718
719 (Update of update: The first update was not right either, extending
720 read_input_waiting was not necessary. Secondary ttys do seem to
721 send signals on input.)
722
723 (Update^3: Not any more.)
724
725 -- Make make-terminal-frame look up the `tty' and `tty-type' frame
726 parameters from the currently selected terminal before the global
727 default.
728
729 (Done.)
730
731 -- Put all cached terminal escape sequences into struct tty_output.
732 Currently, they are still stored in global variables, so we don't
733 really support multiple terminal types.
734
735 (Done. It was not fun.)
736
737 -- Implement sane error handling after initialization. (Currently
738 emacs exits if you specify a bad terminal type.) The helpful error
739 messages must still be provided when Emacs starts.
740
741 (Done.)
742
743 -- Implement terminal deletion, i.e., deleting local frames, closing
744 the tty device and restoring its previous state without exiting
745 Emacs.
746
747 (Done, but at the moment only called when an error happens during
748 initialization. There is a memory corruption error around this
749 somewhere.) (Update: now it is fully enabled.)
750
751 -- Implement automatic deletion of terminals when the last frame on
752 that terminal is closed.
753
754 (Done.)
755
756 -- Restore tty screen after closing the terminal.
757
758 (Done, we do the same as Emacs 21.2 for all terminals.)
759
760 -- 'TERM=dumb src/emacs' does not restore the terminal state.
761
762 (Done.)
763
764 -- C-g should work on secondary terminals.
765
766 (Done, but the binding is not configurable.)
767
768 -- Deal with SIGHUP in Emacs and in emacsclient. (After this, the
769 server-frames may be removed from server.el.)
770
771 (Done, nothing to do. It seems that Emacs does not receive SIGHUP
772 from secondary ttys, which is actually a good thing.) (Update: I
773 think it would be a bad idea to remove server-frames.)
774
775 -- Change emacsclient/server.el to support the -t argument better,
776 i.e. automatically close the socket when the frame is closed.
777
778 (Seems to be working OK.)
779
780 -- Fix mysterious memory corruption error with tty deletion. To
781 trigger it, try the following shell command:
782
783 while true; do TERM=no-such-terminal-definition emacsclient -h; done
784
785 Emacs usually dumps core after a few dozen iterations. (The bug
786 seems to be related to the xfreeing or bzeroing of
787 tty_output.Wcm. Maybe there are outside references to struct Wcm?
788 Why were these vars collected into a struct before multi-tty
789 support?)
790
791 (Done. Whew. It turned out that the problem had nothing to do
792 with hypothetical external references to Wcm, or any other
793 tty_output component; it was simply that delete_tty closed the
794 filehandles of secondary ttys twice, resulting in fclose doubly
795 freeing memory. Utterly trivial matter. I love the C's memory
796 management, it puts hair on your chest.)
797
798 -- Support raw secondary terminals. (Note that SIGIO works only on
799 the controlling terminal.) Hint: extend read_input_waiting for
800 multiple ttys and hopefully this will be fixed.
801
802 (Done, it seems to have been working already for some time. It
803 seems F_SETOWN does work, after all. Not sure what made it fail
804 earlier, but it seems to be fixed (there were several changes
805 around request_sigio, maybe one of them did it).
806 read_input_waiting is only used in sys_select, don't change
807 it.) (Update: After adding X support, it's broken again.)
808 (Update^2: No it isn't.) :-)
809
810 -- Find out why does Emacs abort when it wants to close its
811 controlling tty. Hint: chan_process[] array. Hey, maybe
812 noninterrupt-IO would work, too? Update: no, there is no process
813 for stdin/out.
814
815 (Done. Added add/delete_keyboard_wait_descriptor to
816 term_init/delete_tty. The hint was right, in a way.)
817
818 -- Issue with SIGIO: it needs to be disabled during redisplay. See if
819 fcntl kernel behaviour could be emulated by emacsclient.
820
821 (Done. Simply disabled the SIGIO emulation hack in emacsclient.)
822 (Update: it was added back.) (Update^2: and removed again.)
823
824 -- server.el: There are issues with saving files in buffers of closed
825 clients. Try editing a file with emacsclient -f, and (without
826 saving it) do a delete-frame. The frame is closed without
827 question, and a surprising confirmation prompt appears in another
828 frame.
829
830 (Done. delete-frame now asks for confirmation if it still has
831 pending buffers, and modified buffers don't seem to be deleted.)
832
833 -- emacsclient.el, server.el: Handle eval or file open errors when
834 doing -t.
835
836 (Done.)
837
838 -- Make parts of struct tty_output accessible from Lisp. The device
839 name and the type is sufficient.
840
841 (Done, see frame-tty-name and frame-tty-type.)
842
843 -- Export delete_tty to the Lisp environment, for emacsclient.
844
845 (Done, see delete-tty.)
846
847 -- Get rid of the accessor macros in termchar.h, or define macros for
848 all members.
849
850 (Done.)
851
852 -- Move device-specific parameters (like costs) commonly used by
853 device backends to a common, device-dependent structure.
854
855 (Done. See struct display_method in termhooks.h.)
856
857 -- Fix X support.
858
859 (Done. Well, it seems to be working.)
860
861 -- Allow simultaneous X and tty frames. (Handling input could be
862 tricky. Or maybe not.)
863
864 (Done. Allowed, that is. It is currently extremely unstable, to
865 the point of being unusable. The rif variable causes constant
866 core dumps. Handling input is indeed tricky.)
867
868 -- Rewrite multi-tty input in terms of MULTI_KBOARD.
869
870 (Done. In fact, there was no need to rewrite anything, I just
871 added a kboard member to tty_display_info, and initialized the
872 frame's kboard from there.)
873
874 -- Fix rif issue with X-tty combo sessions. IMHO the best thing to do
875 is to get rid of that global variable (and use the value value in
876 display_method, which is guaranteed to be correct).
877
878 (Done, did exactly that. Core dumps during combo sessions became
879 much rarer. In fact, I have not yet met a single one.)
880
881 -- Add multi-tty support to talk.el.
882
883 (Done.)
884
885 -- Clean up the source of emacsclient. It is a mess.
886
887 (Done, eliminated stupid proxy-pty kludge.)
888
889 -- Fix faces on tty frames during X-tty combo sessions. There is an
890 init_frame_faces call in init_sys_modes, see if there is a problem
891 with it.
892
893 (Done, there was a stupid mistake in
894 Ftty_supports_face_attributes_p. Colors are broken, though.)
895
896 -- C-x 5 2, C-x 5 o, C-x 5 0 on an emacsclient frame unexpectedly
897 exits emacsclient. This is a result of trying to be clever with
898 delete-frame-functions.
899
900 (Fixed, added delete-tty-after-functions, and changed server.el to
901 use it.)
902
903 -- Something with (maybe) multi-keyboard support broke function keys
904 and arrows on ttys during X+tty combo sessions. Debug this.
905
906 (I can't reproduce it, maybe the terminal type was wrong.)
907
908 -- Fix input from raw ttys (again).
909
910 (Now it seems to work all right.)
911
912 -- During an X-tty combo session, a (message "Hello") from a tty frame
913 goes to the X frame. Fix this.
914
915 (Done. There was a safeguard against writing to the initial
916 terminal frame during bootstrap which prevented echo_area_display
917 from working correctly on a tty frame during a combo session.)
918
919 -- If there are no frames on its controlling terminal, Emacs should
920 exit if the user presses C-c there.
921
922 (Done, as far as possible. See the SIGTERM comment in
923 interrupt_signal on why this seems to be impossible to solve this
924 in general.)
925
926 -- During an X session, Emacs seems to read from stdin. Also, Emacs
927 fails to start without a controlling tty.
928
929 (Fixed by replacing the troublesome termcap display with a dummy
930 bootstrap display during bootstrap.
931
932 -- Do tty output through struct display, like graphical display
933 backends.
934
935 (Done.)
936
937 -- Define an output_initial value for output_method for the initial
938 frame that is dumped with Emacs. Checking for this frame (e.g. in
939 cmd_error_internal) is ugly.
940
941 (Done, broking interactive temacs.)
942
943 -- The command `emacsclient -t -e '(delete-frame)'' fails to exit.
944
945 (Fixed.)
946
947 -- frame-creation-function should always create a frame that is on the
948 same display as the selected frame. Maybe frame-creation-function
949 should simply be removed and make-frame changed to do the right
950 thing.
951
952 (Done, with a nice hack. frame-creation-function is now frame-local.)
953
954 -- Fix C-g on raw ttys.
955
956 (Done. I disabled the interrupt/quit keys on all secondary
957 terminals, so Emacs sees C-g as normal input. This looks like an
958 overkill, because emacsclient has extra code to pass SIGINT to
959 Emacs, so C-g should remain the interrupt/quit key on emacsclient
960 frames. See the next entry why implementing this distinction would
961 be a bad idea.)
962
963 -- Make sure C-g goes to the right frame with ttys. This is hard, as
964 SIGINT doesn't have a tty parameter. :-(
965
966 (Done, the previous change fixes this as a pleasant side effect.)
967
968 -- I have seen a case when Emacs with multiple ttys fell into a loop
969 eating 100% of CPU time. Strace showed this loop:
970
971 getpid() = 30284
972 kill(30284, SIGIO) = 0
973 --- SIGIO (I/O possible) @ 0 (0) ---
974 ioctl(6, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
975 ioctl(5, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
976 ioctl(0, FIONREAD, [0]) = 0
977 sigreturn() = ? (mask now [])
978 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747760}, NULL) = 0
979 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747806}, NULL) = 0
980 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
981 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
982 gettimeofday({1072842297, 748245}, NULL) = 0
983
984 I have seen something similar with a single X frame, but have not
985 been able to reproduce it for debugging.
986
987 Update: This may have been caused by checking for nread != 0
988 instead of nread > 0 after calling read_socket_hook in
989 read_avail_input.
990
991 (Fixed. This was caused by unconditionally including stdin in
992 input_wait_mask in init_process. The select call in
993 wait_reading_process_input always returned immediately, indicating
994 that there is pending input from stdin, which nobody read.
995
996 Note that the above strace output seems to be an unrelated but
997 similar bug. I think that is now fixed.)
998
999 -- Exiting Emacs while there are emacsclient frames doesn't restore the
1000 ttys to their default states.
1001
1002 (This seems to be fixed by some previous change.)
1003
1004 -- Allow opening an X session after -nw.
1005
1006 (Done.)
1007
1008 -- Fix color handling during tty+X combo sessions. (It seems that tty
1009 sessions automatically convert the face colors to terminal colors
1010 when the face is loaded. This conversion must happen instead on
1011 the fly in write_glyphs, which might be problematic, as color
1012 approximation is currently done in lisp (term/tty-colors.el).)
1013 (Update: hm, colors seem to work fine if I start emacs with -nw and
1014 then create an X frame. Maybe it's just a small buglet somewhere.)
1015
1016 (Seems to be fixed. The problem was in startup.el, it did not
1017 initialize tty colors when the initial window system was
1018 graphical.)
1019
1020 -- emacs -nw --eval '(y-or-n-p "Foobar")' segfaults. (Reported by
1021 Romain Francoise)
1022
1023 (Fixed, there was a keyboard initialization problem.)
1024
1025 -- Fix interactive use of temacs. There are face-related SEGVs, most
1026 likely because of changes in realize_default_face, realize_face.
1027
1028 (Fixed.)
1029
1030 -- Don't exit Emacs when the last X connection fails during a
1031 multi-display session.
1032
1033 (Fixed.)
1034
1035 -- Dan Nicolaescu noticed that starting emacsclient on the same
1036 terminal device that is the controlling tty of the Emacs process
1037 gives unexpected results.
1038
1039 (Fixed.)
1040
1041 -- Istvan Marko reported that Emacs hang on ttys if it was started
1042 from a shell script.
1043
1044 (Fixed. There was a bug in the multi-tty version of
1045 narrow_foreground_group. tcsetpgrp blocks if it is called from a
1046 process that is not in the same process group as the tty.)
1047
1048 -- emacsclient -t from an Emacs term buffer does not work, complains
1049 about face problems. This can even lock up Emacs (if the recursive
1050 frame sets single_kboard). Update: the face problems are caused by
1051 bugs in term.el, not in multi-tty. The lockup is caused by
1052 single_kboard mode, and is not easily resolvable. The best thing to
1053 do is to simply refuse to create a tty frame of type `eterm'.
1054
1055 (Fixed, changed emacsclient to check for TERM=eterm. The face
1056 complaints seem to be caused by bugs in term.el; they are not
1057 related to multi-tty.)
1058
1059 -- Find out the best way to support suspending Emacs with multiple
1060 ttys. My guess: disable it on the controlling tty, but from other
1061 ttys pass it on to emacsclient somehow. (It is (I hope) trivial to
1062 extend emacsclient to handle suspend/resume. A `kill -STOP' almost
1063 works right now.)
1064
1065 (Done. I needed to play with signal handling and the server
1066 protocol a bit to make emacsclient behave as a normal UNIX program
1067 wrt foreground/background process groups.)
1068
1069 -- There is a flicker during the startup of `emacs -nw'; it's as if
1070 the terminal is initialized, reset and then initialialized again.
1071 Debug this. (Hint: narrow_foreground_group is called twice during
1072 startup.)
1073
1074 (This is gone.)
1075
1076 -- Robert Chassell has found serious copy-paste bugs with the
1077 multi-tty branch. There seem to be redisplay bugs while copying
1078 from X to a terminal frame. Copying accented characters do not
1079 work for me.
1080
1081 (Patch-124 should fix this, by changing the interprogram-*-function
1082 variables to be frame-local, as suggested by Mark Plaksin
1083 (thanks!). I think that the redisplay bugs are in fact not bugs,
1084 but delays caused by single_kboard --> perhaps MULTI_KBOARD should
1085 be removed.)
1086
1087 -- frame-creation-function was removed, which might be a bad idea.
1088 Think up a compatible solution.
1089
1090 (It was an internal interface that may be changed when necessary.)
1091
1092 -- Change Lisp code not to (getenv "TERM"); use the `tty-type' frame
1093 parameter or the frame-tty-type function instead. (M-x tags-search
1094 "TERM" helps with this.) Update: Actually, all getenv invocations
1095 should be checked for multi-tty compatibility, and an interface
1096 must be implemented to get the remote client's environment.
1097
1098 (Done. Only getenv calls in lisp/term/*.el were changed; other
1099 calls should be mostly left as they are.)
1100
1101 -- Add an elaborate mechanism for display-local variables. (There are
1102 already a few of these; search for `terminal-local' in the Elisp
1103 manual.)
1104
1105 (Not needed. Display-local variables could be emulated by
1106 frame-local variables.)
1107
1108 -- Emacs assumes that all terminal frames have the same locale
1109 settings as Emacs itself. This may lead to bogus results in a
1110 multi-locale setup. (E.g., while logging in from a remote client
1111 with a different locale.)
1112 (Update after new bugreport by Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs:
1113 (at least) the structs terminal_coding and keyboard_coding in
1114 coding.c must be moved to struct display, and the Lisp interface
1115 [set-]keyboard-coding-system must be adapted for the change.)
1116
1117 (Fixed. Emacs now uses the locale settings as seen by the
1118 emacsclient process for server tty frames.)
1119 (Update: Not really; Vlocale_coding_system is still global.)
1120
1121 -- Make `struct display' accessible to Lisp programs. Accessor functions:
1122
1123 (displayp OBJECT): Returns t if OBJECT is a display.
1124 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1125
1126 (display-list): Returns list of currently active displays.
1127 => Implemented.
1128
1129 (selected-display): Returns the display object of the selected frame.
1130 => Not strictly necessary, but implemented anyway.
1131
1132 (frame-display FRAME): Returns the display object of FRAME.
1133 => Implemented.
1134
1135 (display-frames DISPLAY): Returns a list of frames on DISPLAY.
1136 => Already implemented, see frames-on-display-list.
1137
1138 (display-type DISPLAY): Returns the type of DISPLAY, as a
1139 symbol. (See `framep'.)
1140 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1141
1142 (display-device DISPLAY): Returns the name of the device that
1143 DISPLAY uses, as a string. (E.g: "/dev/pts/16", or
1144 ":0.0")
1145 => Implemented as display-name.
1146
1147 etc.
1148
1149 See next issue why this is necessary.
1150
1151 (Update: The consensus on emacs-devel seems to be to do this via
1152 integer identifiers. That's fine by me.)
1153
1154 (Done.)
1155
1156 -- The following needs to be supported:
1157
1158 $ emacsclient -t
1159 C-z
1160 $ emacsclient -t
1161 (This fails now.)
1162
1163 The cleanest way to solve this is to allow multiple displays on the
1164 same terminal device; each new emacsclient process should create
1165 its own display. As displays are currently identified by their
1166 device names, this is not possible until struct display becomes
1167 accessible as a Lisp-level object.
1168
1169 (Done.)
1170
1171 -- Miles Bader suggests that C-x C-c on an emacsclient frame should
1172 only close the frame, not exit the entire Emacs session. Update:
1173 see above for a function that does this. Maybe this should be the
1174 new default?
1175
1176 (Done. This is the new default. No complaints so far.)
1177
1178 -- Clean up the frame-local variable system. I think it's ugly and
1179 error-prone. But maybe I just haven't yet fully understood it.
1180
1181 (Nothing to do. It doesn't seem ugly any more. It's rather clever.)
1182
1183 -- Support multiple character locales. A version of
1184 `set-locale-environment' needs to be written for setting up
1185 display-local settings on ttys. I think calling
1186 set-display-table-and-terminal-coding-system and
1187 set-keyboard-coding-system would be enough. The language
1188 environment itself should remain a global setting.
1189
1190 (Done, by an ugly hack.)
1191
1192 -- The terminal customization files in term/*.el tend to change global
1193 parameters, which may confuse Emacs with multiple displays. Change
1194 them to tweak only frame-local settings, if possible. (They tend
1195 to call define-key to set function key sequences a lot.)
1196
1197 (Done, by making `function-key-map' terminal-local (i.e., part of
1198 struct kboard). This has probably covered all the remaining problems.)
1199
1200 -- Make `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' terminal-local.
1201
1202 (Done.)
1203
1204 -- Implement `terminal-local-value' and `set-terminal-local-value' to
1205 allow deterministic access to terminal local bindings. The
1206 encode-kb package can not set up `key-translation-map' without
1207 these. The terminal-local bindings seem to be independent of what
1208 frame is selected.
1209
1210 (Done.)
1211
1212 ;;; arch-tag: 8da1619e-2e79-41a8-9ac9-a0485daad17d
1213