Re: [PATCH] Add Sync capability to Alacritty terminfo

[Thomas Dickey]

On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 12:33:09AM +0000, Christian Dürr wrote:
> On Wed, May 19, 2021, at 20:22, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 08:42:15AM +0000, Christian Dürr wrote:
> > > In version 0.8.0 Alacritty added support for synchronized terminal
> > > updates as documented here:
> > > 
> > > https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/terminal-wg/specifications/-/merge_requests/2
> > 
> > sorry, but I'm going to use changes from that source.
                   ^NOT
> 
> I'd assume you mean you're NOT going to use changes from that source? At least
> this message doesn't make sense to me otherwise.

agreed (looking at the time, it was rather early here...)

with that in mind, I may have further typos
 
> If you don't mind, I'd love some elaboration on why not. Is the issue with the
> specific source (terminal-wg/iTerm), or is there a problem with adding
> non-standard capabilities that have not proven itself to be accepted by enough
> emulators/clients?

both.  If you read through the former closely, you'll notice many cases
where I found that just ignoring it was the only constructive solution.

For the latter - I'd point to documentation on the feature, but there's
none worth mentioning.  Making a second implementation by reading source
code isn't something that I'm that interested in.  Given the _vague_
terms (read the tmux manpage for instance, or the so-called "spec"
which the developer provided), it's no better than another solution
in search of a problem.  The screen manpage lists several capabilities
which have found no place in ncurses; tmux has a few as well.

I've tried to summarize in general terms (without pointedly mentioning
cases which have been problems) the guidelines which I use:

https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#dbupdate

In this case, the specific cause for rejection is one which has come up
on this list before: the feature is described in terms that a user would
get some expectation that ncurses will do something specific when it sees
the capability.  It doesn't, and none of the developers involved appears
willing or able to conceive and implement a viable solution involving
ncurses.  Since it's not _relevant_ to ncurses, there's no need to include
it in ncurses.
 
> I'd appreciate the insight just so I could potentially work around the issues
> together with clients that might be interested in querying for this feature.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Chris

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
https://invisible-island.net
ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net

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