Re: multi-user screen: switching windows isn't reflected in screen instances

[Micah Cowan]

David Chanters wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I like the feature of multi-user screen.  I often do this via:
>
> screen -x -S somesessionname
>
> And it works great -- until, that is, I change windows in screen (via
> ^a a, or ^a 1 -- where "1" could be any number depending on the number
> of windows in screen).  As soon as I do this, the change is reflect in
> that screen instance *only* and NOT the other screen instances which
> are shared -- as soon as I switch back to a window which all the other
> screen instances are viewing and start typing, then it all works --
> and I see all the activity in all of the shared instances.
>
> I clearly consider this a bug -- am I wrong?  I am using screen 4.01,
> if that matters, from Debian Sid.

Not a bug. That's not what most people would want it to do, either. The 
idea behind -x isn't that everyone is seeing the same window, but that 
they all have _access_ to the same windows. I tend to use -x, for 
example, to view two different windows in two different X terms, from 
the same session. That way I can easily swap which terminal is viewing 
which window.

Of course, a fairly straightforward way to accomplish what you've 
described: nested screen sessions. Have one session that everyone 
connects to, and then an inner session that has all the "real" windows. 
Then when you switch between windows in the inner screen, everyone in 
the outer window can see it (and of course, you can use aclchg to 
prevent people from opening new windows and such in the "outer" screen).

--
HTH,
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer.
GNU Maintainer: wget, screen, teseq
http://micah.cowan.name/