Re: lynx-dev Lynx 2.8.3.dev4+Slang 1.3.8: arrow keys not working?

[Klaus Weide]

On Fri, 16 Jul 1999, T.E.Dickey wrote:

> > Adding this patch, without any fallback for those who can't get their 
> > TERM description right, suddenly increases the requirements for using 
> > lynx-with-slang.  We are not talking about adding more encouragement 
> > for Bad Things, but about taking away something that "worked" (for 
> > many people at least). 
> 
> Only partly - they're (I assume) setting their $TERM to something other
> than the terminal description that comes with rxvt, e.g., "vt100" or
> "xterm" - or "ansi" or "linux".

So far we have:

 Who              term/emulator                                  OS
 ===              =============                                ======
F. Meunier:       rxvt                                           ??
I. Cordeiro:     "the same problem"                            Solaris,FreeBSD
Kim DeVaughn:    "lynx no longer works"                          FreeBSD
Kim Scarborough: "not unique to any particular terminal program" FreeBSD 3.2

This doesn't seem specific to either rxvt or a particular OS.

> > Actually, with the code as it is now, lynx-with-slang has become *more* 
> > strict than lynx-with-ncurses: the latter still uses all the ancient 
> > hardcoded sequences in LYgetch_for, which are not in the code path for 
> > slang. 
> 
> slang uses a piece of that (look at the djgpp code).  

I was talking about Unix-like only, or more concretely slang with USE_KEYMAPS
defined; what slang does with djgpp is irrelevant here.

> I'd clean up some of
> it, but haven't (til recently) gotten the pieces to do test builds.

I hope that cleanup won't amount to breaking even more people's arrow keys.

> > > That chunk of code is really for VMS.  (apparently the termcap support in 
> > > slang isn't portable to non-Unix platforms).  The VMS support is really 
> > > the only valid justification for the table. 
> >  
> > But the table seems to be used even with ncurses.  (Before this change at 
> > least; I didn't verify whether dev.4 changed that) 
> 
> It's used in ncurses as part of making the behavior in
> lynx_initialize_keymaps() mirror that of slang.  That in turn was designed
> to replace the chunk of hardcoded assignments at the top of LYgetch_for().

So you agree that VMS support is not the only 'valid justification' for the
table?  It's also some intermediate step on the path to eliminating hardcoded
assignments?

No matter the purpose or plans - those hardcoded assignments are the only
thing that makes arrow keys etc. 'work' if neither USE_KEYMAPS nor HAVE_KEYPAD
are defined.  (Again note, I'm not considering the DOS/Windows ports here.)
Will lynx only be compiled on (Unix) systems for which either USE_KEYMAPS or
HAVE_KEYPAD apply?

What is the use of USE_KEYMAPS with ncurses anyway?  So far, the only purpose
of those pieces of code with ncurses seem to be to support the .lynx-keymaps
file that was originally introduced for slang.  But if terminfo is set up
correctly, there should be no need for that file anyway.  It can't be an
intermediate step for simplifying LYgetch_for() for curses/ncurses in general,
since it depends on ncurses-specific functions.

   Klaus