Bug#563625: cursor disappears when visible-tabs are used in mc-edit
Drew Parsons
Version: 2:4.7.0-pre1-3
Severity: normal
Using mc inside a gnome terminal (v2.28.2), the cursor disappears when
placed over tab characters, with visible-tabs switched on.
This is a known bug, an erstwhile workaround is given in README.Debian:
- To prevent the disappearing cursor over tabs using the visible_tabs feature
in gnome-terminal set this environment variable:
export TERM="gnome-256color"
This is the result of applying that advice (adding export TERM="gnome-256color"
to .bashrc):
$ mc
Unknown terminal: gnome-256color
Check the TERM environment variable.
Also make sure that the terminal is defined in the terminfo database.
Alternatively, set the TERMCAP environment variable to the desired
termcap entry.
... and so mc fails to run with the given workaround. There is no such
gnome-256color terminfo.
A better fix is needed.
Thanks,
Drew
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Versions of packages mc depends on:
ii libc6 2.10.2-3 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii libglib2.0-0 2.22.3-2 The GLib library of C routines
ii libgpm2 1.20.4-3.2 General Purpose Mouse - shared lib
ii libslang2 2.2.2-2 The S-Lang programming library - r
Versions of packages mc recommends:
ii imagemagick 7:6.5.8.3-1 image manipulation programs
Versions of packages mc suggests:
ii arj 3.10.22-8 archiver for .arj files
ii bzip2 1.0.5-3 high-quality block-sorting file co
ii dbview 1.0.4-1 View dBase III files
ii file 5.03-5 Determines file type using "magic"
ii lynx 2.8.8dev.2-1 Text-mode WWW Browser (transitiona
ii mime-support 3.48-1 MIME files 'mime.types' & 'mailcap
ii odt2txt 0.4-1 simple converter from OpenDocument
ii perl 5.10.1-8 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction
ii unzip 6.0-1 De-archiver for .zip files
ii w3m 0.5.2-2.1 WWW browsable pager with excellent
ii xpdf 3.02-1.4+lenny1 Portable Document Format (PDF) sui
ii zip 3.0-1 Archiver for .zip files
-- no debconf information
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listm...@lists.debian.org
Yury V. Zaytsev
> ... and so mc fails to run with the given workaround. There is no such
> gnome-256color terminfo.
Hi!
Actually this workaround doesn't work at all, that's why I removed it
from the new version of the package to be uploaded soon. The real fix is
to patch VTE, which I did for my Ubuntu PPA and updated the bug against
upstream, but it's around for like 3 years already and they are not
really determined to fix it.
There's nothing we can do at this point.
--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev
Thomas Dickey
> On Mon, 2010-01-04 at 09:31 +0100, Yury V. Zaytsev wrote:
>> On Mon, 2010-01-04 at 18:03 +1100, Drew Parsons wrote:
>>
>>> ... and so mc fails to run with the given workaround. There is no such
>>> gnome-256color terminfo.
>>
>> Hi!
>>
>> Actually this workaround doesn't work at all, that's why I removed it
>> from the new version of the package to be uploaded soon. The real fix is
>> to patch VTE, which I did for my Ubuntu PPA and updated the bug against
>> upstream, but it's around for like 3 years already and they are not
>> really determined to fix it.
>>
>
> It's an extremely annoying situation. Will the VTE patch be applied to
> Debian's version?
>
> On Mon, 2010-01-04 at 04:55 -0500, Thomas Dickey wrote:
>> gnome-256color isn't in ncurses-base, but is in ncurses-term.
>
> Ah ok, thanks Thomas.
no problem...
> I notice that ncurses-base does have xterm-256color, and it fixes
(works
> around) the cursor problem the same way that gnome-256color from
> ncurses-term does.
>
> In fact xterm-256color is probably a little saner, since I notice if I
> use gnome-256color, that there's a side-effect where mc outputs "Press
> any key to continue..." and halts waiting for a key, when I run an
> aliased cd command to a specific directory. Very annoying.
Something like that sounds more like something not finding the entry
(but on Debian, everyone should be looking in the same place).
It's not likely to be a terminfo difference, since that doesn't have much
to do with the input-handling (unless there's some mismatch in
function-keys, for instance).
> I suggest the best thing for us in the short term is to keep the advice
> in README.Debian, but refer to xterm-256color rather than
> gnome-256color.
hmm - see the output of "infocmp xterm-256color gnome-256color" to see why
I think that's not a good recommendation: its function keys are very
different from xterm's, which would only aggravate some longstanding bug
reports. There are other differences, to hide some of gnome-terminal's
bugs.
> That would save having to pull in the extra ncurses package, and it
> works better anyway. (or did you mean, Yury, that xterm-256color does
> not fix the problem in the new version either?)
>
> (maybe a better solution still would be to remove gnome-terminal from
> the archives altogether??? ;) )
I don't suppose there's much hope of that. It would be nice if VTE were
documented properly, but that may be even less likely.
--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net
Drew Parsons
>
> > ... and so mc fails to run with the given workaround. There is no such
> > gnome-256color terminfo.
>
> Hi!
>
> Actually this workaround doesn't work at all, that's why I removed it
> from the new version of the package to be uploaded soon. The real fix is
> to patch VTE, which I did for my Ubuntu PPA and updated the bug against
> upstream, but it's around for like 3 years already and they are not
> really determined to fix it.
>
It's an extremely annoying situation. Will the VTE patch be applied to
Debian's version?
On Mon, 2010-01-04 at 04:55 -0500, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> gnome-256color isn't in ncurses-base, but is in ncurses-term.
Ah ok, thanks Thomas.
I notice that ncurses-base does have xterm-256color, and it fixes (works
around) the cursor problem the same way that gnome-256color from
ncurses-term does.
In fact xterm-256color is probably a little saner, since I notice if I
use gnome-256color, that there's a side-effect where mc outputs "Press
any key to continue..." and halts waiting for a key, when I run an
aliased cd command to a specific directory. Very annoying.
I suggest the best thing for us in the short term is to keep the advice
in README.Debian, but refer to xterm-256color rather than
gnome-256color.
That would save having to pull in the extra ncurses package, and it
works better anyway. (or did you mean, Yury, that xterm-256color does
not fix the problem in the new version either?)
(maybe a better solution still would be to remove gnome-terminal from
the archives altogether??? ;) )
Drew
Yury V. Zaytsev
> > That would save having to pull in the extra ncurses package, and it
> > works better anyway. (or did you mean, Yury, that xterm-256color does
> > not fix the problem in the new version either?)
> >
> > (maybe a better solution still would be to remove gnome-terminal from
> > the archives altogether??? ;) )
>
> I don't suppose there's much hope of that. It would be nice if VTE were
> documented properly, but that may be even less likely.
I'm not a Debian developer and I can't promise you that the patches I
use for my private Ubuntu builds will be included in Debian and also I
can't guarantee that they do not break anything.
All I can do is to tell you the bug number in the upstream bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=473170
And hope that someone more knowledgeable / influential / having more
spare time than me will make it in Debian.
--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev
Drew Parsons
> This is an automatic notification regarding your Bug report
> which was filed against the mc package:
>
> #563625: cursor disappears when visible-tabs are used in mc-edit
>
> It has been closed by "Yury V. Zaytsev" <yu...@shurup.com>.
>
> > This bug has been fixed in vte:
> >
> > https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=602596
> >
Yay!
:)