Site Tools


output-help
no way to compare when less than two revisions

Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.


output-help [2007/05/19 21:12] (current) – created - external edit 127.0.0.1
Line 1: Line 1:
 +# $EPIC: output-help.txt,v 1.1 2007/05/19 21:12:56 jnelson Exp $
 +======My output is all screwed up!======
 +This help file discusses various problems you might have with getting
 +output to work properly, and how to fix them.
 +
 +=====About terminal emulators=====
 +A terminal emulator is the computer program that handles input and output 
 +between you, the user, and a login shell (on a unix system).
 +
 +Unix shells are fundmentally a character-based interface.  You type keys
 +and your terminal emulator turns your keypresses into sequences of bytes
 +which are sent to the program you are running in the shell.  The program
 +you are running in the shell sends bytes back to your terminal emulator,
 +which displays them on your screen.
 +
 +It is entirely up to your emulator how to handle these two tasks.  There 
 +are conventions that most emulators obey, but there is no **requirement**
 +that is universal.
 +
 +Commonly used terminal emulators are 
 +  -) Unix console (especially on linux)
 +  -) Xterm (the default emulator for the X window system)
 +  -) rxvt, Gterm, Kterm (common third party emulators for X)
 +  -) Windows console (especially when using cygwin, or windows telnet)
 +  -) Putty (A common emulator for windows)
 +
 +In order for the client to correctly function with your terminal emulator,
 +you must correctly describe your emulator to the client.  Rather than 
 +proscriptively describe all the settings, this document will list the 
 +common problems you will see if it's not all set up properly, and how
 +to fix it.
 +
 +=====Alt-<number> doesn't switch to a window=====
 +====The Problem:====
 +When you press Alt-<number>, the emulator will send one of these three 
 +things to the client:
 +  1) The <number> character with the high bit set ("eight bit character")
 +  2) The escape character (ascii 27) followed by the number <number>
 +  3) The <number> without any modification.
 +
 +====The Reason:====
 +Since the client must [[bind]] sequences of characters, if your script
 +binds #1, but your emulator sends #2 (or vice vesra), it won't work the
 +way you want it to.
 +
 +====The Solution:====
 +Most scripts assume your emulator will send #2, since that's what the 
 +linux console does.  If your emulator sends #1, you can 
 +[[set high_bit_escape]] 1 to force the client to pretend the emulator sent #2.
 +
  
output-help.txt · Last modified: 2007/05/19 21:12 by 127.0.0.1