1 -*- coding: utf-8; mode: text; -*-
3 Copyright (C) 2007-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
6 From README.multi-tty in the multi-tty branch.
7 Some of this information may be out of date.
13 The following is a (sadly incomplete) list of people who have
14 contributed to the project by testing, submitting patches, bug
15 reports, and suggestions. Thanks!
17 Bernard Adrian <bernadrian@free.fr>
18 ARISAWA Akihiro <ari@mbf.ocn.ne.jp>
19 Vincent Bernat <bernat@luffy.cx>
20 Han Boetes <han@mijncomputer.nl>
21 Francisco Borges <borges@let.rug.nl>
22 Damien Cassou <damien.cassou@laposte.net>
23 Robert J. Chassell <bob@rattlesnake.com>
24 Romain Francoise <romain@orebokech.com>
25 Ami Fischman <ami@fischman.org>
26 Noah Friedman <friedman@splode.com>
27 Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs <friedel@nomaden.org>
28 Samium Gromoff <_deepfire@mail.ru>
29 Mikhail Gusarov <dottedmag@dottedmag.net>
30 Eric Hanchrow <offby1@blarg.net>
31 IRIE Tetsuya <irie@t.email.ne.jp>
32 Yoshiaki Kasahara <kasahara@nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp>
33 Bas Kok <nekkobassu@yahoo.com>
34 Jurej Kubelka <Juraj.Kubelka@email.cz>
35 David Lichteblau <david@lichteblau.com>
36 Richard Lewis <rtf@jabble.com>
37 mace <mace@kirjakaapeli.lib.hel.fi>
38 Suresh Madhu <madhu@cs.unm.edu>
39 Xavier Mallard <zedek@gnu-rox.org>
40 Istvan Marko <mi-mtty@kismala.com>
41 Ted Morse <morse@ciholas.com>
42 Gergely Nagy <algernon@debian.org>
43 Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu>
44 Kalle Olavi Niemitalo <kon@iki.fi>
45 Mark Plaksin <happy@mcplaksin.org>
46 Frank Ruell <stoerte@dreamwarrior.net>
47 Tom Schutzer-Weissmann <trmsw@yahoo.co.uk>
48 Joakim Verona <joakim@verona.se>
49 Dan Waber <dwaber@logolalia.com>
52 Richard Stallman was kind enough to review an earlier version of my
59 It still needs to be ported to Windows/Mac/DOS. Both multiple
60 tty device support and simultaneous X and tty frame support works
61 fine. Emacsclient has been extended to support opening new tty and X
62 frames. It has been changed to open new Emacs frames by default.
64 Tested on GNU/Linux, Solaris 8, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
68 * GTK support. If you compile your Emacs with the GTK
69 toolkit, some functionality of multi-tty may be lost. In
70 particular, you may get crashes while working on multiple X
71 displays at once. Previous releases of GTK had limitations
72 and bugs that prevented full-blown multi-display support in
73 Emacs. (GTK crashed when Emacs tries to disconnect from an
74 X server.) Things are much improved in the current GTK
75 version, but if you do experience crashes in libgtk, try
76 compiling Emacs with the Lucid toolkit instead.
78 * The single-kboard mode.
80 If your multi-tty Emacs session seems to be frozen, you
81 probably have a recursive editing session or a pending
82 minibuffer prompt (which is a kind of recursive editing) on
83 another display. To unfreeze your session, switch to that
84 display and complete the recursive edit, for example by
85 pressing C-] (`abort-recursive-edit').
87 I am sorry to say that currently there is no way to break
88 out of this "single-kboard mode" from a frozen display. If
89 you are unable to switch to the display that locks the
90 others (for example because it is on a remote computer),
91 then you can use emacsclient to break out of all recursive
94 emacsclient -e '(top-level)'
96 Note that this (perhaps) unintuitive behavior is by design.
97 Single-kboard mode is required because of an intrinsic Emacs
98 limitation that is very hard to eliminate. (This limitation
99 is related to the single-threaded nature of Emacs.)
101 I plan to implement better user notification and support for
102 breaking out of single-kboard mode from locked displays.
104 * Mac and DOS support is broken, doesn't even
105 compile. Multiple display support will probably not provide
106 new Emacs features on these systems, but the multi-tty
107 branch changed a few low-level interfaces, and the
108 system-dependent source files need to be adapted
109 accordingly. The changes are mostly trivial, so almost
110 anyone can help, if only by compiling the branch and
111 reporting the compiler errors.
117 To test the multi-tty feature, start up the Emacs server with the
123 and then (from a shell prompt on another terminal) start emacsclient
125 emacsclient -t /optional/file/names... (for a tty frame)
126 emacsclient /optional/file/names... (for an X frame)
128 (Make sure both emacs and emacsclient are multi-tty versions.)
129 You'll hopefully have two fully working, independent frames on
130 separate terminals. The new frame is closed automatically when you
131 finish editing the specified files (C-x #), but delete-frame (C-x 5 0)
132 also works. Of course, you can create frames on more than two tty
135 Creating new frames on the same tty with C-x 5 2 (make-frame-command)
136 works, and behaves the same way as in previous Emacs versions. If you
137 exit emacs, all terminals should be restored to their previous states.
142 I think the best way to use the new Emacs is to have it running inside
143 a disconnected GNU screen session, and always use emacsclient for
144 normal work. One advantage of this is that not a single keystroke of
145 your work will be lost if the display device that you are using
146 crashes, or the network connection times out, or whatever. (I had an
147 extremely unstable X server for some time while I was developing these
148 patches, and running Emacs this way has saved me a number of M-x
149 recover-session invocations.)
151 I use the following two bash scripts to handle my Emacs sessions:
153 -------------------------------------------------------connect-emacs--
155 # Usage: connect-emacs <name> <args>...
157 # Connects to the Emacs instance called NAME. Starts up the instance
158 # if it is not already running. The rest of the arguments are passed
164 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
165 echo "Usage: connect_emacs <name> <args>..." >&2
168 preload-emacs "$name" wait
169 /usr/bin/emacsclient.emacs-multi-tty -s "$name" "$@"
170 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
172 -------------------------------------------------------preload-emacs--
174 # Usage: preload-emacs <name> [<waitp>]
176 # Preloads the Emacs instance called NAME in a detached screen
177 # session. Does nothing if the instance is already running. If WAITP
178 # is non-empty, the function waits until the server starts up and
179 # creates its socket; otherwise it returns immediately.
183 screendir="/var/run/screen/S-$USER"
184 serverdir="/tmp/emacs$UID"
185 emacs=/usr/bin/emacs-multi-tty # Or wherever you installed your multi-tty Emacs
187 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
188 echo "Usage: preload_emacs <name> [<waitp>]" >&2
192 if [ ! -e "$screendir"/*."$name" ]; then
193 if [ -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; then
194 # Delete leftover socket (for the wait option)
195 rm "$serverdir/$name"
197 screen -dmS "$name" "$emacs" -nw --eval "(setq server-name \"$name\")" -f server-start
199 if [ ! -z "$waitp" ]; then
200 while [ ! -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; do sleep 0.1; done
202 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
204 I have the following in my profile to have two instances automatically
205 preloaded for editing and email:
210 It is useful to set up short aliases for connect-emacs. I use the
213 alias edit="connect-emacs editor"
215 alias et="connect-emacs editor -t"
216 alias gnus="connect-emacs gnus"
222 ** See if `tty-defined-color-alist' needs to be terminal-local.
223 Update: Dan says it should be, so convert it.
225 ** Mikhail Gusarov suggest to add a hook akin to
226 `after-make-frame-functions' that is called whenever Emacs connects
227 to a new terminal. Good idea!
229 ** emacsclient -t on the console does not work after su. You have to
230 use non-root accounts or start as root to see this.
236 *ERROR*: Could not open file: /dev/tty1
238 The tty can be opened as /dev/tty by emacsclient, but not by Emacs.
239 This seems to be a serious problem. Currently my only idea is to
240 bring back the ugly pty proxy hack from the initial versions of
241 multi-tty. Suggestions would be appreciated.
243 Update: we could change emacsclient to pass its open file
244 descriptor to the Emacs process. Unfortunately, this requires a
245 new Lisp-level Emacs API, and as file descriptors are not otherwise
246 exported to Lisp, this approach seems at least as ugly as the pty
249 ** lisp/vc.el depends on the terminal type during load time.
250 `vc-annotate-color-map' is one example that needs to be fixed.
252 ** Understand how `quit_throw_to_read_char' works, and fix any bugs
255 ** See if getcjmp can be eliminated somehow. Why does Emacs allow
256 asynchronous input processing while it's reading input anyway?
258 ** `delete-frame' events are handled by `special-event-map'
259 immediately when read by `read_char'. This is fine but it prevents
260 higher-level keymaps from binding that event to get notified of the
263 Sometimes it would be useful for Lisp code to be notified of frame
264 deletions after they have happened, usually because they want to
265 clean up after the deleted frame. Not all frame-local states can
266 be stored as a frame parameter. For example,
267 `display-splash-screen' uses `recursive-edit' with a special keymap
268 override to create its buffer---and it leads to all kinds of
269 nastiness if Emacs stays in this recursive edit mode after the
270 frame containing the splash screen is deleted. Basically, the
271 splash-screen implementation wants to throw out of the recursive
272 edit when the frame is deleted; however, it is not legal to throw
273 from `delete-frame-functions' because `delete-frame' must not fail.
274 (Introducing `delete-frame-after-functions' would not help either
275 because `delete-frame' may not fail at that time either.)
277 Currently `fancy-splash-screens' installs a
278 `delete-frame-functions' hook that sets up a timer to exit the
279 recursive edit. This is an adequate solution, but it would perhaps
280 be better to have something like a `frame-deleted' event that could
281 be bound in the normal way.
283 ** Trouble: `setenv' doesn't actually set environment variables in the
284 Emacs process. This defeats the purpose of the elaborate
285 `server-with-environment' magic around the `tgetent' call in
288 ** (Possibly) create hooks in struct device for creating frames on a
289 specific terminal, and eliminate the hackish terminal-related frame
290 parameters (display, tty, tty-type).
295 ** Decide whether to keep the C implementation of terminal parameters,
296 or revert to the previous, purely Lisp code. It turned out that
297 local environments do not need terminal parameters after all.
299 ** Move Fsend_string_to_terminal to term.c, and declare get_named_tty
300 as static, removing it from dispextern.h.
301 Move fatal to emacs.c and declare it somewhere.
303 ** Search for `suspend-emacs' references and replace them with
304 `suspend-frame', if necessary. Ditto for `save-buffers-kill-emacs'
305 vs. `save-buffers-kill-display'.
307 ** Emacs crashes when a tty frame is resized so that there is no space
308 for all its windows. (Tom Schutzer-Weissmann)
310 ** Report GTK multi-display problems to GTK maintainers. For extra
313 Currently you can not connect to new X displays when you compile
314 Emacs with GTK support. If you want to play around with GTK
315 multidisplay (and don't mind core dumps), you can edit src/config.h
316 and define HAVE_GTK_MULTIDISPLAY there by hand.
318 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715
320 Update: Han reports that GTK+ version 2.8.9 almost gets display
321 disconnects right. GTK will probably be fully fixed by the time
322 multi-tty gets into the trunk.
324 Update: I am still having problems with GTK+ 2.8.10. I have the
325 impression that the various multidisplay fixes will only get
326 released in GTK+ 2.10.
328 ** Audit `face-valid-attribute-values' usage in customize and
329 elsewhere. Its return value depends on the current window system.
330 Replace static initializers using it with runtime functions. For
331 example, custom's buttons are broken on non-initial device types.
333 ** Possibly turn off the double C-g feature when there is an X frame.
334 C.f. (emacs)Emergency Escape.
336 ** frames-on-display-list should also accept frames.
338 ** Consider the `tty-type' frame parameter and the `display-tty-type'
339 function. They serve the exact same purpose. I think it may be
340 a good idea to eliminate one of them, preferably `tty-type'.
342 ** The handling of lisp/term/*.el, and frame creation in general, is a
343 big, big mess. How come the terminal-specific file is loaded by
344 tty-create-frame-with-faces? I don't think it is necessary to load
345 these files for each frame; once per terminal should be enough.
346 Update: lisp/term/*.el is not loaded repeatedly anymore, but
347 faces.el still needs to be cleaned up.
349 ** Fix frame-set-background-mode in this branch. It was recently
350 changed in CVS, and frame.el in multi-tty has not yet been adapted
351 for the changes. (It needs to look at
352 default-frame-background-mode.) (Update: maybe it is fixed now;
353 needs testing.) (Note that the byte compiler has this to say about
356 term/rxvt.el:309:17:Warning: assignment to free variable
357 `default-frame-background-mode'
359 ** I think `(set-)terminal-local-value' and the terminal parameter
360 mechanism should be integrated into a single framework.
362 (Update: `(set-)terminal-local-value' is now eliminated, but the
363 terminal-local variables should still be accessible as terminal
364 parameters. This also applies to `display-name' and similar
367 ** Add the following hooks: after-delete-frame-hook (for server.el,
368 instead of delete-frame-functions),
369 after-delete-terminal-functions, after-create-terminal-functions.
371 ** BULK RENAME: The `display-' prefix of new Lisp-level functions
372 conflicts with stuff like `display-time-mode'. Use `device-'
373 or `terminal-' instead. I think I prefer `terminal-'.
375 It turns out that most of the offending Lisp functions were defined
376 in the trunk. Therefore, compatibility aliases should be defined
377 for the following names:
379 display-color-cells terminal-color-cells
380 display-color-p terminal-color-p
381 display-graphic-p terminal-graphic-p
382 display-grayscale-p terminal-grayscale-p
383 display-images-p terminal-images-p
384 display-mm-height terminal-mm-height
385 display-mm-width terminal-mm-width
386 display-mouse-p terminal-mouse-p
387 display-multi-font-p terminal-multi-font-p
388 display-multi-frame-p terminal-multi-frame-p
389 display-pixel-height terminal-pixel-height
390 display-pixel-width terminal-pixel-width
391 display-pixels-per-inch terminal-pixels-per-inch
392 display-planes terminal-planes
393 display-popup-menus-p terminal-popup-menus-p
394 display-save-under terminal-save-under
395 display-screens terminal-screens
396 display-supports-face-attributes-p terminal-supports-face-attributes-p
397 display-visual-class terminal-visual-class
398 framep-on-display framep-on-terminal
399 frames-on-display-list frames-on-terminal-list
401 The following functions were introduced in the multi-tty branch, and
402 were renamed without aliases:
404 delete-display delete-terminal
405 display-controlling-tty-p controlling-tty-p
406 display-list terminal-list
407 display-live-p terminal-live-p
408 display-name terminal-name
409 display-tty-type tty-type
410 frame-display frame-terminal
411 selected-display selected-terminal
413 ** The single-keyboard mode of MULTI_KBOARD is extremely confusing
414 sometimes; Emacs does not respond to stimuli from other keyboards.
415 At least a beep or a message would be important, if the single-mode
416 is still required to prevent interference. (Reported by Dan
419 Update: selecting a region with the mouse enables single_kboard
420 under X. This is very confusing.
422 Update: After discussions with Richard Stallman, this will be
423 resolved by having locked displays warn the user to wait, and
424 introducing a complex protocol to remotely bail out of
425 single-kboard mode by pressing C-g.
427 Update: Warning the user is not trivial to implement, as Emacs has
428 only one echo area, shared by all frames. Ideally the warning
429 should not be displayed on the display that is locking the others.
430 Perhaps the high probability of user confusion caused by
431 single_kboard mode deserves a special case in the display code.
432 Alternatively, it might be good enough to signal single_kboard mode
433 by changing the modelines or some other frame-local display element
434 on the locked out displays.
436 Update: In fact struct kboard does have an echo_string slot.
438 ** The session management module is prone to crashes when the X
439 connection is closed and then later I try to connect to a new X
442 #0 0xb7ebc806 in SmcGetIceConnection () from /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6
443 #1 0x080e6641 in x_session_check_input (bufp=0xbf86c9c0) at xsmfns.c:144
444 #2 0x080d3bbc in XTread_socket (device=0xa722ff8, expected=1, hold_quit=0xbf86ca90) at xterm.c:7037
445 #3 0x080fa404 in read_avail_input (expected=1) at keyboard.c:6696
446 #4 0x080fa4ca in handle_async_input () at keyboard.c:6900
447 #5 0x080d51fa in x_term_init (display_name=162628899, xrm_option=0x0, resource_name=0x857068c "emacs") at xterm.c:10622
448 #6 0x080d920e in x_display_info_for_name (name=162628899) at xfns.c:3975
449 #7 0x080d92f9 in check_x_display_info (object=1) at xfns.c:274
450 #8 0x080d97b8 in Fx_create_frame (parms=151221485) at xfns.c:3016
451 #9 0x0815bf72 in Ffuncall (nargs=2, args=0xbf86ceec) at eval.c:2851
453 I installed a workaround to prevent this. The X session manager is
454 only contacted when the very first display in the Emacs session is
455 an X display. Also, x_delete_display() on this display aborts
456 session management, and XTread_socket only calls
457 x_session_check_input when it is called for the display that the
458 session was opened on. While this does not really fix the bug, it
459 makes it much less frequent, because session manager support will
460 not normally be enabled when Emacs can survive the shutdown of the
463 See if xsmfns.c should be updated.
465 ** Hunt down display-related functions in frame.el and extend them all
466 to accept display ids.
468 ** rif->flush_display_optional (NULL) calls should be replaced by a
471 ** The set-locale-environment hack (adding the DISPLAY option) should
472 be replaced with a clean design.
474 ** standard-display-table should be display-local.
475 standard-display-european should be display-local.
477 ** With iswitchb-default-method set to 'always-frame, only frames on
478 the current display should be considered. This might involve
479 extending `get-buffer-window'.
481 ** Have a look at Vlocale_coding_system. Seems like it would be a
482 tedious job to localize it, although most references use it for
483 interfacing with libc and are therefore OK with the global
486 Exceptions found so far: x-select-text and
487 x-cut-buffer-or-selection-value.
489 ** Have a look at fatal_error_hook.
491 ** Have a look at set_frame_matrix_frame.
493 ** Check if we got term-setup-hook right.
495 ** I think tip_frame should be display-local.
497 ** Check display reference count handling in x_create_tip_frame.
499 ** make-frame does not correctly handle extra parameters in its
502 (frame-parameter (make-frame (list (cons 'foobar 42))) 'foobar)
505 (This is likely an error in the CVS trunk.)
507 ** Dan Nicolaescu suggests that -nw should be added as an alias for -t
508 in emacsclient. Good idea. (Alas, implementing this is not
509 trivial, getopt_long does not seem to support two-letter ``short''
510 options. Patches are welcome.)
512 ** Mark Plaksin suggests that emacsclient should accept the same
513 X-related command-line arguments as Emacs. Most of the X-related
514 argument-handling is done in Lisp, so this should be quite easy to
515 implement. (For example, Samium Gromoff wants emacsclient to
516 support --geometry; implementing this would add that support.)
518 ** Gergely Nagy suggests that C-x # should only kill the current
519 frame, not any other emacsclient frame that may have the same file
520 opened for editing. I think I agree with him.
522 ** Very strange bug: visible-bell does not work on secondary
523 terminals in xterm and konsole. The screen does flicker a bit,
524 but it's so quick it isn't noticeable.
526 (Update: This is probably some problem with padding or whatnot on
527 the secondary terminals.)
529 ** Move baud_rate to struct display.
531 ** Implement support for starting an interactive Emacs session without
532 an initial frame. (The user would connect to it and open frames
533 later, with emacsclient.)
535 ** Fix Mac support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
536 current state of Mac-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
537 are not useful; before starting work on Mac support, revert to
538 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
540 ** Fix DOS support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
541 current state of DOS-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
542 are not useful; before starting work on DOS support, revert to
543 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
545 ** Fix Windows support. Currently bootstrapping works on w32, but Emacs
546 crashes on startup and none of the multi-tty features are
547 implemented. Many XXX comments mark things that probably need
548 updating, ChangeLogs will help in spotting changes to X specific
549 files that may need porting.
551 ** Do a grep on XXX and ?? for more issues.
553 ** flow-ctrl.el must be updated.
555 ** Fix stuff_char for multi-tty. Doesn't seem to be of high priority.
560 (ex-TODO items with explanations.)
562 -- Introduce a new struct for terminal devices.
564 (Done, see struct tty_output. The list of members is not yet
567 -- Change the bootstrap procedure to initialize tty_list.
569 (Done, but needs review.)
571 -- Change make-terminal-frame to support specifying another tty.
573 (Done, new frame parameters: `tty' and `tty-type'.)
575 -- Implement support for reading from multiple terminals.
577 (Done, read_avail_input tries to read from each terminal, until one
578 succeeds. MULTI_KBOARD is not used. Secondary terminals don't send
581 (Update: They do, now.)
583 (Update2: After enabling X, they don't.)
585 -- other-frame should cycle through the frames on the `current'
588 (Done, by trivially modifying next_frame and prev_frame.)
590 -- Support different terminal sizes.
594 -- Make sure terminal resizes are handled gracefully. (Could be
597 (Done. We don't get automatic SIGWINCH for additional ttys,
600 -- Extend emacsclient to automatically open a new tty when it connects
603 (Done. It's an ugly hack, needs more work.)
605 -- Redisplay must refresh the topmost frame on *all* terminals, not
606 just the initial terminal.
608 (Done, but introduced an ugly redisplay problems. Ugh.)
610 -- Fix redisplay problems.
612 (Done; it turned out that the entire Wcm structure must be moved
613 inside tty_output. Why didn't I catch this earlier?)
615 -- Provide a way for emacsclient to tell Emacs that the tty has been
618 (Done, simply forward the SIGWINCH signal.)
620 -- Each keypress should automatically select the frame corresponding
621 to the terminal that it was coming from. This means that Emacs
622 must know from which terminal the last keyboard event came from.
624 (Done, it was quite simple, the input event system already
625 supported multiple frames.)
627 -- Fix SIGIO issue with secondary terminals.
629 (Done, emacsclient signals Emacs after writing to the proxy pseudo
630 terminal. Note that this means that multi-tty does not work with
633 (Update: This is bullshit. There is a read_input_waiting function,
634 extend that somehow.)
636 (Update of update: The first update was not right either, extending
637 read_input_waiting was not necessary. Secondary ttys do seem to
638 send signals on input.)
640 (Update^3: Not any more.)
642 -- Make make-terminal-frame look up the `tty' and `tty-type' frame
643 parameters from the currently selected terminal before the global
648 -- Put all cached terminal escape sequences into struct tty_output.
649 Currently, they are still stored in global variables, so we don't
650 really support multiple terminal types.
652 (Done. It was not fun.)
654 -- Implement sane error handling after initialization. (Currently
655 emacs exits if you specify a bad terminal type.) The helpful error
656 messages must still be provided when Emacs starts.
660 -- Implement terminal deletion, i.e., deleting local frames, closing
661 the tty device and restoring its previous state without exiting
664 (Done, but at the moment only called when an error happens during
665 initialization. There is a memory corruption error around this
666 somewhere.) (Update: now it is fully enabled.)
668 -- Implement automatic deletion of terminals when the last frame on
669 that terminal is closed.
673 -- Restore tty screen after closing the terminal.
675 (Done, we do the same as Emacs 21.2 for all terminals.)
677 -- 'TERM=dumb src/emacs' does not restore the terminal state.
681 -- C-g should work on secondary terminals.
683 (Done, but the binding is not configurable.)
685 -- Deal with SIGHUP in Emacs and in emacsclient. (After this, the
686 server-frames may be removed from server.el.)
688 (Done, nothing to do. It seems that Emacs does not receive SIGHUP
689 from secondary ttys, which is actually a good thing.) (Update: I
690 think it would be a bad idea to remove server-frames.)
692 -- Change emacsclient/server.el to support the -t argument better,
693 i.e. automatically close the socket when the frame is closed.
695 (Seems to be working OK.)
697 -- Fix mysterious memory corruption error with tty deletion. To
698 trigger it, try the following shell command:
700 while true; do TERM=no-such-terminal-definition emacsclient -h; done
702 Emacs usually dumps core after a few dozen iterations. (The bug
703 seems to be related to the xfreeing or bzeroing of
704 tty_output.Wcm. Maybe there are outside references to struct Wcm?
705 Why were these vars collected into a struct before multi-tty
708 (Done. Whew. It turned out that the problem had nothing to do
709 with hypothetical external references to Wcm, or any other
710 tty_output component; it was simply that delete_tty closed the
711 filehandles of secondary ttys twice, resulting in fclose doubly
712 freeing memory. Utterly trivial matter. I love the C's memory
713 management, it puts hair on your chest.)
715 -- Support raw secondary terminals. (Note that SIGIO works only on
716 the controlling terminal.) Hint: extend read_input_waiting for
717 multiple ttys and hopefully this will be fixed.
719 (Done, it seems to have been working already for some time. It
720 seems F_SETOWN does work, after all. Not sure what made it fail
721 earlier, but it seems to be fixed (there were several changes
722 around request_sigio, maybe one of them did it).
723 read_input_waiting is only used in sys_select, don't change
724 it.) (Update: After adding X support, it's broken again.)
725 (Update^2: No it isn't.) :-)
727 -- Find out why does Emacs abort when it wants to close its
728 controlling tty. Hint: chan_process[] array. Hey, maybe
729 noninterrupt-IO would work, too? Update: no, there is no process
732 (Done. Added add/delete_keyboard_wait_descriptor to
733 term_init/delete_tty. The hint was right, in a way.)
735 -- Issue with SIGIO: it needs to be disabled during redisplay. See if
736 fcntl kernel behavior could be emulated by emacsclient.
738 (Done. Simply disabled the SIGIO emulation hack in emacsclient.)
739 (Update: it was added back.) (Update^2: and removed again.)
741 -- server.el: There are issues with saving files in buffers of closed
742 clients. Try editing a file with emacsclient -f, and (without
743 saving it) do a delete-frame. The frame is closed without
744 question, and a surprising confirmation prompt appears in another
747 (Done. delete-frame now asks for confirmation if it still has
748 pending buffers, and modified buffers don't seem to be deleted.)
750 -- emacsclient.el, server.el: Handle eval or file open errors when
755 -- Make parts of struct tty_output accessible from Lisp. The device
756 name and the type is sufficient.
758 (Done, see frame-tty-name and frame-tty-type.)
760 -- Export delete_tty to the Lisp environment, for emacsclient.
762 (Done, see delete-tty.)
764 -- Get rid of the accessor macros in termchar.h, or define macros for
769 -- Move device-specific parameters (like costs) commonly used by
770 device backends to a common, device-dependent structure.
772 (Done. See struct display_method in termhooks.h.)
776 (Done. Well, it seems to be working.)
778 -- Allow simultaneous X and tty frames. (Handling input could be
779 tricky. Or maybe not.)
781 (Done. Allowed, that is. It is currently extremely unstable, to
782 the point of being unusable. The rif variable causes constant
783 core dumps. Handling input is indeed tricky.)
785 -- Rewrite multi-tty input in terms of MULTI_KBOARD.
787 (Done. In fact, there was no need to rewrite anything, I just
788 added a kboard member to tty_display_info, and initialized the
789 frame's kboard from there.)
791 -- Fix rif issue with X-tty combo sessions. IMHO the best thing to do
792 is to get rid of that global variable (and use the value in
793 display_method, which is guaranteed to be correct).
795 (Done, did exactly that. Core dumps during combo sessions became
796 much rarer. In fact, I have not yet met a single one.)
798 -- Add multi-tty support to talk.el.
802 -- Clean up the source of emacsclient. It is a mess.
804 (Done, eliminated stupid proxy-pty kludge.)
806 -- Fix faces on tty frames during X-tty combo sessions. There is an
807 init_frame_faces call in init_sys_modes, see if there is a problem
810 (Done, there was a stupid mistake in
811 Ftty_supports_face_attributes_p. Colors are broken, though.)
813 -- C-x 5 2, C-x 5 o, C-x 5 0 on an emacsclient frame unexpectedly
814 exits emacsclient. This is a result of trying to be clever with
815 delete-frame-functions.
817 (Fixed, added delete-tty-after-functions, and changed server.el to
820 -- Something with (maybe) multi-keyboard support broke function keys
821 and arrows on ttys during X+tty combo sessions. Debug this.
823 (I can't reproduce it, maybe the terminal type was wrong.)
825 -- Fix input from raw ttys (again).
827 (Now it seems to work all right.)
829 -- During an X-tty combo session, a (message "Hello") from a tty frame
830 goes to the X frame. Fix this.
832 (Done. There was a safeguard against writing to the initial
833 terminal frame during bootstrap which prevented echo_area_display
834 from working correctly on a tty frame during a combo session.)
836 -- If there are no frames on its controlling terminal, Emacs should
837 exit if the user presses C-c there.
839 (Done, as far as possible. See the SIGTERM comment in
840 interrupt_signal on why this seems to be impossible to solve this
843 -- During an X session, Emacs seems to read from stdin. Also, Emacs
844 fails to start without a controlling tty.
846 (Fixed by replacing the troublesome termcap display with a dummy
847 bootstrap display during bootstrap.
849 -- Do tty output through struct display, like graphical display
854 -- Define an output_initial value for output_method for the initial
855 frame that is dumped with Emacs. Checking for this frame (e.g. in
856 cmd_error_internal) is ugly.
858 (Done, breaking interactive temacs.)
860 -- The command `emacsclient -t -e '(delete-frame)'' fails to exit.
864 -- frame-creation-function should always create a frame that is on the
865 same display as the selected frame. Maybe frame-creation-function
866 should simply be removed and make-frame changed to do the right
869 (Done, with a nice hack. frame-creation-function is now frame-local.)
871 -- Fix C-g on raw ttys.
873 (Done. I disabled the interrupt/quit keys on all secondary
874 terminals, so Emacs sees C-g as normal input. This looks like an
875 overkill, because emacsclient has extra code to pass SIGINT to
876 Emacs, so C-g should remain the interrupt/quit key on emacsclient
877 frames. See the next entry why implementing this distinction would
880 -- Make sure C-g goes to the right frame with ttys. This is hard, as
881 SIGINT doesn't have a tty parameter. :-(
883 (Done, the previous change fixes this as a pleasant side effect.)
885 -- I have seen a case when Emacs with multiple ttys fell into a loop
886 eating 100% of CPU time. Strace showed this loop:
889 kill(30284, SIGIO) = 0
890 --- SIGIO (I/O possible) @ 0 (0) ---
891 ioctl(6, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
892 ioctl(5, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
893 ioctl(0, FIONREAD, [0]) = 0
894 sigreturn() = ? (mask now [])
895 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747760}, NULL) = 0
896 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747806}, NULL) = 0
897 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
898 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
899 gettimeofday({1072842297, 748245}, NULL) = 0
901 I have seen something similar with a single X frame, but have not
902 been able to reproduce it for debugging.
904 Update: This may have been caused by checking for nread != 0
905 instead of nread > 0 after calling read_socket_hook in
908 (Fixed. This was caused by unconditionally including stdin in
909 input_wait_mask in init_process_emacs. The select call in
910 wait_reading_process_input always returned immediately, indicating
911 that there is pending input from stdin, which nobody read.
913 Note that the above strace output seems to be an unrelated but
914 similar bug. I think that is now fixed.)
916 -- Exiting Emacs while there are emacsclient frames doesn't restore the
917 ttys to their default states.
919 (This seems to be fixed by some previous change.)
921 -- Allow opening an X session after -nw.
925 -- Fix color handling during tty+X combo sessions. (It seems that tty
926 sessions automatically convert the face colors to terminal colors
927 when the face is loaded. This conversion must happen instead on
928 the fly in write_glyphs, which might be problematic, as color
929 approximation is currently done in lisp (term/tty-colors.el).)
930 (Update: hm, colors seem to work fine if I start emacs with -nw and
931 then create an X frame. Maybe it's just a small buglet somewhere.)
933 (Seems to be fixed. The problem was in startup.el, it did not
934 initialize tty colors when the initial window system was
937 -- emacs -nw --eval '(y-or-n-p "Foobar")' segfaults. (Reported by
940 (Fixed, there was a keyboard initialization problem.)
942 -- Fix interactive use of temacs. There are face-related SEGVs, most
943 likely because of changes in realize_default_face, realize_face.
947 -- Don't exit Emacs when the last X connection fails during a
948 multi-display session.
952 -- Dan Nicolaescu noticed that starting emacsclient on the same
953 terminal device that is the controlling tty of the Emacs process
954 gives unexpected results.
958 -- Istvan Marko reported that Emacs hang on ttys if it was started
961 (Fixed. There was a bug in the multi-tty version of
962 narrow_foreground_group. tcsetpgrp blocks if it is called from a
963 process that is not in the same process group as the tty.)
965 -- emacsclient -t from an Emacs term buffer does not work, complains
966 about face problems. This can even lock up Emacs (if the recursive
967 frame sets single_kboard). Update: the face problems are caused by
968 bugs in term.el, not in multi-tty. The lockup is caused by
969 single_kboard mode, and is not easily resolvable. The best thing to
970 do is to simply refuse to create a tty frame of type `eterm'.
972 (Fixed, changed emacsclient to check for TERM=eterm. The face
973 complaints seem to be caused by bugs in term.el; they are not
974 related to multi-tty.)
976 -- Find out the best way to support suspending Emacs with multiple
977 ttys. My guess: disable it on the controlling tty, but from other
978 ttys pass it on to emacsclient somehow. (It is (I hope) trivial to
979 extend emacsclient to handle suspend/resume. A `kill -STOP' almost
982 (Done. I needed to play with signal handling and the server
983 protocol a bit to make emacsclient behave as a normal UNIX program
984 wrt foreground/background process groups.)
986 -- There is a flicker during the startup of `emacs -nw'; it's as if
987 the terminal is initialized, reset and then initialized again.
988 Debug this. (Hint: narrow_foreground_group is called twice during
993 -- Robert Chassell has found serious copy-paste bugs with the
994 multi-tty branch. There seem to be redisplay bugs while copying
995 from X to a terminal frame. Copying accented characters do not
998 (Patch-124 should fix this, by changing the interprogram-*-function
999 variables to be frame-local, as suggested by Mark Plaksin
1000 (thanks!). I think that the redisplay bugs are in fact not bugs,
1001 but delays caused by single_kboard --> perhaps MULTI_KBOARD should
1004 -- frame-creation-function was removed, which might be a bad idea.
1005 Think up a compatible solution.
1007 (It was an internal interface that may be changed when necessary.)
1009 -- Change Lisp code not to (getenv "TERM"); use the `tty-type' frame
1010 parameter or the frame-tty-type function instead. (M-x tags-search
1011 "TERM" helps with this.) Update: Actually, all getenv invocations
1012 should be checked for multi-tty compatibility, and an interface
1013 must be implemented to get the remote client's environment.
1015 (Done. Only getenv calls in lisp/term/*.el were changed; other
1016 calls should be mostly left as they are.)
1018 -- Add an elaborate mechanism for display-local variables. (There are
1019 already a few of these; search for `terminal-local' in the Elisp
1022 (Not needed. Display-local variables could be emulated by
1023 frame-local variables.)
1025 -- Emacs assumes that all terminal frames have the same locale
1026 settings as Emacs itself. This may lead to bogus results in a
1027 multi-locale setup. (E.g., while logging in from a remote client
1028 with a different locale.)
1029 (Update after new bugreport by Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs:
1030 (at least) the structs terminal_coding and keyboard_coding in
1031 coding.c must be moved to struct display, and the Lisp interface
1032 [set-]keyboard-coding-system must be adapted for the change.)
1034 (Fixed. Emacs now uses the locale settings as seen by the
1035 emacsclient process for server tty frames.)
1036 (Update: Not really; Vlocale_coding_system is still global.)
1038 -- Make `struct display' accessible to Lisp programs. Accessor functions:
1040 (displayp OBJECT): Returns t if OBJECT is a display.
1041 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1043 (display-list): Returns list of currently active displays.
1046 (selected-display): Returns the display object of the selected frame.
1047 => Not strictly necessary, but implemented anyway.
1049 (frame-display FRAME): Returns the display object of FRAME.
1052 (display-frames DISPLAY): Returns a list of frames on DISPLAY.
1053 => Already implemented, see frames-on-display-list.
1055 (display-type DISPLAY): Returns the type of DISPLAY, as a
1056 symbol. (See `framep'.)
1057 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1059 (display-device DISPLAY): Returns the name of the device that
1060 DISPLAY uses, as a string. (E.g: "/dev/pts/16", or
1062 => Implemented as display-name.
1066 See next issue why this is necessary.
1068 (Update: The consensus on emacs-devel seems to be to do this via
1069 integer identifiers. That's fine by me.)
1073 -- The following needs to be supported:
1080 The cleanest way to solve this is to allow multiple displays on the
1081 same terminal device; each new emacsclient process should create
1082 its own display. As displays are currently identified by their
1083 device names, this is not possible until struct display becomes
1084 accessible as a Lisp-level object.
1088 -- Miles Bader suggests that C-x C-c on an emacsclient frame should
1089 only close the frame, not exit the entire Emacs session. Update:
1090 see above for a function that does this. Maybe this should be the
1093 (Done. This is the new default. No complaints so far.)
1095 -- Clean up the frame-local variable system. I think it's ugly and
1096 error-prone. But maybe I just haven't yet fully understood it.
1098 (Nothing to do. It doesn't seem ugly any more. It's rather clever.)
1100 -- Support multiple character locales. A version of
1101 `set-locale-environment' needs to be written for setting up
1102 display-local settings on ttys. I think calling
1103 set-display-table-and-terminal-coding-system and
1104 set-keyboard-coding-system would be enough. The language
1105 environment itself should remain a global setting.
1107 (Done, by an ugly hack.)
1109 -- The terminal customization files in term/*.el tend to change global
1110 parameters, which may confuse Emacs with multiple displays. Change
1111 them to tweak only frame-local settings, if possible. (They tend
1112 to call define-key to set function key sequences a lot.)
1114 (Done, by making `function-key-map' terminal-local (i.e., part of
1115 struct kboard). This has probably covered all the remaining problems.)
1117 -- Make `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' terminal-local.
1121 -- Implement `terminal-local-value' and `set-terminal-local-value' to
1122 allow deterministic access to terminal local bindings. The
1123 encode-kb package can not set up `key-translation-map' without
1124 these. The terminal-local bindings seem to be independent of what
1129 -- xt-mouse.el needs to be adapted for multi-tty. It currently
1130 signals an error on kill-emacs under X, which prevents the user
1131 from exiting Emacs. (Reported by Mnemonikk on freenode.)
1136 -- Having {reset,init}_all_sys_modes in set-input-mode breaks arrow
1137 keys on non-selected terminals under screen, and sometimes on other
1138 terminal types as well. The other function keys continue to work
1139 fine. Sometimes faces on these screens become garbled.
1141 This only seems to affect displays that are of the same terminfo
1142 type as the selected one. Interestingly, in screen Emacs normally
1143 reports the up arrow key as `M-o A', but after the above SNAFU, it
1144 complains about `M-[ a'. UNIX ttys are a complete mystery to me,
1145 but it seems the reset-reinitialize cycle somehow leaves the
1146 non-selected terminals in a different state than usual. I have no
1147 idea how this could happen.
1149 Currently set-input-mode resets only the currently selected
1150 terminal, which seems to somehow work around the problem.
1154 Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:
1155 > Some terminals have 2 modes for cursor keys: Application Mode where
1156 > the cursor keys transmit the codes defined in the terminfo entry, and
1157 > Cursor mode. Applications have to send the smkx and rmkx terminfo
1158 > strings to switch between the 2 modes. So Emacs (and emacsclient) have
1159 > to send smkx when initializing and rmkx when quitting (or on
1162 (I think patch-370 fixed this.)
1164 -- This long-standing bug (first reported by Han Boetes) seems to come
1165 and go all the time. It is time to track it down and fix it.
1170 # From another xterm:
1171 emacsclient -e '(y-or-n-p "Do you want me to crash? ")'
1172 # Notice how the answer ends up in the *scratch* buffer
1176 (Fixed in patch-414 after detailed analysis by Kalle Olavi Niemitalo.)
1178 -- normal-erase-is-backspace-mode in simple.el needs to be updated for
1179 multi-tty (rep. by Dan Waber). (The Delete key is broken on X
1182 (Fixed in patch-427.)
1184 -- I think keyboard-translate-table should be made terminal-local.
1186 (Done in patch-431.)
1188 -- The semantics of terminal-local variables are confusing; it is not
1189 clear what binding is in effect in any given time. See if
1190 current_kboard (or at least the terminal-local bindings exported to
1191 Lisp) might be changed to be tied to the selected frame instead.
1192 Currently, `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' may be
1193 accessed reliably only using the hackish
1194 `(set-)terminal-local-value' functions.
1196 Perhaps there should be a difference between `last-command' &co.
1197 and these more conventional configuration variables.
1198 (E.g. `symbol-value' would use current_kboard to access
1199 `last-command', but SELECTED_FRAME()->display->kboard to get the
1200 value of `function-key-map'.
1202 (Fixed in patch-434.)
1204 -- If the first key pressed on a new tty terminal is a function key,
1205 it is not recognized correctly. May be related to the bug below.
1207 (Seems to have been fixed as a side effect of patch-434. "The bug
1208 below" was the set-input-mode madness.)
1210 (Update: this bug was fixed for good in patch-449. It was tracked
1211 down to a bug in `read_key_sequence': it failed to reinitialize its
1212 local function-key-map/key-translation-map references when it
1213 switched keyboards. I don't understand why did this bug only
1214 appear on brand new frames, though!)
1216 -- Disable connecting to a new X display when we use the GTK toolkit.
1218 (Disabled in patch-450.)
1220 -- Implement automatic forwarding of client environment variables to
1221 forked processes, as discussed on the multi-tty list. Terminal
1222 parameters are now accessible in C code, so the biggest obstacle is
1223 gone. The `getenv_internal' and `child_setup' functions in
1224 callproc.c must be changed to support the following variable:
1226 terminal-local-environment-variables is a variable defined in ...
1228 Enable or disable terminal-local environment variables.
1230 If set to t, `getenv', `setenv' and subprocess creation
1231 functions use the environment variables of the emacsclient
1232 process that created the selected frame, ignoring
1233 `process-environment'.
1235 If set to nil, Emacs uses `process-environment' and ignores
1236 the client environment.
1238 Otherwise, `terminal-local-environment-variables' should be a
1239 list of variable names (represented by Lisp strings) to look
1240 up in the client environment. The rest will come from
1241 `process-environment'.
1243 (Implemented in patch-461; `terminal-getenv', `terminal-setenv' and
1244 `with-terminal-environment' are now replaced by extensions to
1245 `getenv' and `setenv', and the new `local-environment-variables'
1248 (Updated in patch-465 to fix the semantics of let-binding
1249 `process-environment'. `process-environment' was changed to
1250 override all local/global environment variables, and a new variable
1251 `global-environment' was introduced to have `process-environment's
1254 (Updated in patch-466 to fix the case when two emacsclient sessions
1255 share the same terminal, but have different environment. The local
1256 environment lists are now stored as frame parameters, so the
1257 C-level terminal parameters are not strictly necessary any more.)
1259 -- `Fdelete_frame' is called from various critical places where it is
1260 not acceptable for the frame deletion to fail, e.g. from
1261 x_connection_closed after an X error. `Fdelete_frame' now protects
1262 against `delete-frame-functions' throwing an error and preventing a
1263 frame delete. (patch-475)
1265 -- Fix set-input-mode for multi-tty. It's a truly horrible interface;
1266 what if we'd blow it up into several separate functions (with a
1267 compatibility definition)?
1269 (Done. See `set-input-interrupt-mode', `set-output-flow-control',
1270 `set-input-meta-mode' and `set-quit-char'.) (patch-457)
1272 -- Let-binding `overriding-terminal-local-map' on a brand new frame
1273 does not seem to work correctly. (See `fancy-splash-screens'.)
1274 The keymap seems to be set up right, but events go to another
1275 terminal. Or is it `unread-command-events' that gets Emacs
1276 confused? Investigate.
1278 (Emacs was confused because a process filter entered
1279 `recursive-edit' while Emacs was reading input. I added support
1280 for this in the input system.) (patch-489)
1282 -- I smell something funny around pop_kboard's "deleted kboard" case.
1283 Determine what are the circumstances of this case, and fix any
1284 bug that comes to light.
1286 (It happens simply because single_kboard's terminal is sometimes
1287 deleted while executing a command on it, for example the one that
1288 kills the terminal. There was no bug here, but I rewrote the whole
1289 single_kboard mess anyway.) (patch-489)
1291 -- Understand Emacs's low-level input system (it's black magic) :-)
1292 What exactly does interrupt_input do? I tried to disable it for
1293 raw secondary tty support, but it does not seem to do anything
1294 useful. (Update: Look again. X unconditionally enables this, maybe
1295 that's why raw terminal support is broken again. I really do need
1296 to understand input.)
1297 (Update: I am starting to understand the read_key_sequence->read-char
1298 ->kbd_buffer_get_event->read_avail_input->read_socket_hook path. Yay!)
1300 (Update: OK, it all seems so easy now (NOT). Input could be done
1301 synchronously (with wait_reading_process_input), or asynchronously
1302 by SIGIO or polling (SIGALRM). C-g either sets the Vquit_flag,
1303 signals a 'quit condition (when immediate_quit), or throws to
1304 `getcjmp' when Emacs was waiting for input when the C-g event
1307 -- Replace wrong_kboard_jmpbuf with a special return value of
1308 read_char. It is absurd that we use setjmp/longjmp just to return
1309 to the immediate caller.
1311 (Done in patch-500.)
1313 -- `tool-bar-mode', `scroll-bar-mode', `menu-bar-mode' and
1314 'fringe-mode' are modes global to the entire Emacs session, not
1315 just a single frame or a single terminal. This means that their
1316 status sometimes differs from what's actually displayed on the
1317 screen. As a consequence, the Options | Show/Hide menu sometimes
1318 shows incorrect status, and you have to select an option twice for
1319 it to have any visible effect on the current frame.
1321 Change Emacs so that the status of the items in the Options |
1322 Show/Hide menu correspond to the current frame.
1324 (Done in patch-537.)
1326 -- The `default-directory' variable should somehow be set to the
1327 cwd of the emacsclient process when the user runs emacsclient
1328 without file arguments. Perhaps it is OK to just override the
1329 directory of the *scratch* buffer.
1331 (Done in patch-539.)
1333 -- The borders on tooltip frames on X are messed up. More
1334 specifically, the frame's internal border (internal-border-width
1335 frame parameter) is not filled with the correct background color.
1337 It seems the border contents are drawn onto by the
1338 update_single_window call in `x-show-tip'. After some debugging, I
1339 think the window's background color is not set up
1340 correctly---calling `x_clear_area' fills the specified area with
1341 black, not light yellow.
1343 (Done in patch-544. A background_pixel field was defined both in
1344 struct frame and struct x_output, and Emacs got confused between
1348 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
1350 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1351 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1352 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1353 (at your option) any later version.
1355 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1356 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1357 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1358 GNU General Public License for more details.
1360 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1361 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.