Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 11:42:34PM -0700, Linda Walsh wrote:
>> Was my elaboration clear enough -- ?
>>
>> It's a display issue not a content issue -- except when you cut/paste
>> from the terminal to another buffer under X.
>
> You forgot to copy the mailing list. Also, X has nothing to do with
> this. This is solely between bash and the terminal.
-----
No... It's about what *I* see, **AND**, when I copy/paste from the
terminal to another application, -- what "X" sees.
> Pasting has nothing to do with bash. Pasting is between X and the
> terminal. Totally separate issue.
---
My terminal is displayed via 'X' --- X pics up
the actual characters that were echoed to the screen. If TABS are
used, it put's TABS in the copy/paste-buffer. If some lame application
substitutes some other character for tabs, it will pic up the wrong value.
For the general case, I submit that it should echo HW tabs when it
encounters
such.
>
>> However I can think of no good reason why bash should not pay attention
>> to terminal settings and use the TAB char -- at least, as an option.
>
> How would bash KNOW what the terminal's tabstops are set to? It can't.
----
It uses the curses library. The code has references through-out that look to
see what column it is in. Bash has builtin features in the prompt-build
feature, to help it determine the correct column so it knows when to wrap your
cursor -- and it knows when to wrap output.
The same library it uses to keep track of that can tell it what the tabs
stops are -- either directly or indirectly.
> I am reluctant to speculate on this matter, but you appear to be grasping
> at straws, so I will proffer some guesswork. Everything from here
> downward is totally guesswork and may be completely wrong.
>
> Imagine that you're writing bash and that you want to include a feature
> that lets people edit their commands. Some of these commands may include
> a literal tab character, even as difficult as it is to do such a thing.
----
Imagine that you have a terminal where people paste intput from X.
Ok.. not hard at all to image where the TABS come from. Imagine that they
can invoke a full-screen oriented editor like emacs or vim to edit a line --
and that they are used to tabbing over when indenting code.
> When the command editor is invoked, bash must reconstruct the command
> on the terminal, bearing in mind that bash knows very little *about*
> the terminal beyond the contents of $TERM and whatever it can glean
> from the system's termcap/terminfo database.
---
Yup..BINGO...
>
> If the command to be edited contains a literal tab, bash must present
> the command on the screen in an editable format.
----
So If a users terminal uses "." -- it would be ok for bash to display
"dot", instead of the actual character?
> The user must be able
> to move the cursor to any part of the command, and the cursor's position
> must make sense to the user, and bash must always know where the cursor
> is in the REAL command in memory.
---
Right -- sans-unicode, 1 char/byte -- user moves 1 char, internal edit
buffer moves 1 char...but on the screen bash expands it to 1-8 chars?
>
> Suppose bash wrote a literal tab to the terminal when in this mode.
> The terminal may do anything with it. The terminal may move the cursor
> to the 8th column, or the 5th column, or the 13th column, or anything.
> Bash wouldn't know where the cursor went.
---
Uh... yeah.. it shouldn't care. it knows that in it's internal buffer
it put out 1 character for that position.
>
> So instead, bash does its own expansion of the tab using the standard
> 8-space tabstops that 99.9999% of the people in the world use.
---
Most people don't type in 8 spaces for a tab. Only hard-coded, broken
computer programs. People use variable tabs in real life -- long before
computers existed -- They put the columns where they wanted them. You don't
see tabs expanded to 8 spaces in a word processor. Tabs are expanded by the
hardware -- or hardware emulation. Then software started evolving to match
the hardware -- but that was a hack. Hardware for years has had variable tab
support -- vt102 -- it's not just linux consoles... it's emulating a much older
standard.
As for how hard it would be to find out the current tab setting?
1) allow the user to specify a tab settting in the ENV... like "duh? -- you mean
allow the user to have input into what tabs expand to? SHOCK...if they
don't have a preference, default to 8.
2), it talks to the curses library -- through it it can find how tabs
are expanded.
Finding out the data and setting it -- can all be set in BASH SCRIPT -- But
getting BASH to reproduce tabs the way the terminal does --- has to be fixed
in BASH.
Here's a prog to read the tabs from the terminal and allow setting them
(only uniform-unidistant tabs at this point, but that's all I need -- if someone
else wants to improve on the prog -- I hereby release it to the public
commons)...
--------------------------
#!/bin/bash
#console_codes(4) man page...
shopt -s expand_aliases
alias int='declare -i'
alias sub='function'
alias array='declare -a'
alias intArray='declare -ia'
printf -v clrallts "\x1b[3g"
printf -v sts "\033H"
printf -v cr "\013"
printf -v cpr "\x1b[6n"
function getpos () {
local wanted=${1:-xy}
local ans x y
( (sleep .01 && echo -en "\x1b[6n" >/dev/tty) & 2>/dev/null )
read -sd R -r -t 2 ans </dev/tty;
declare ans=${ans:2}; x=${ans#*;}; y=${ans%;*} ;
declare -g out=""
[[ $wanted =~ x ]] && out="$x"
[[ $wanted =~ y ]] && out="${out:+$x }$y"
[[ $out ]] && echo "$out"
}
declare -iga tabs
sub get_tabs () {
printf $cr
int pos=0 oldpos=0-1
while ((oldpos!=pos));do
oldpos=pos
printf "\t"
pos=$(getpos x)
tabs+=($pos)
done
return 0
}
prompt="tty_tabs:"
int newcol=${#prompt}+1
echo -n "$prompt"
mycol=$(getpos x)
if [[ $mycol != $newcol ]]; then
echo " Term tabset ability not detected (out=$out mycol=$mycol,
promptlen=$newcol)"
exit -1
fi
if (($#==0)) ; then
echo -en " <n> - set tab stop to N\r"
get_tabs && {
printf "\r (cur tabs (from 1): "
printf "%s " "${tabs[@]}"
printf "\n"
}
exit 1
fi
declare -i tab=$1;
str=""
declare -i pos=1
printf $clrallts
while ((++pos<80)) ;do
if ((pos%tab)); then str+=" "
else str+="$sts"
fi
done
#echo -e "\033c"
echo -n "$str$cr"
# vim: ts=2
