Discussion:
A modest proposal on the input line
Jeremy Nelson
2007-04-01 02:03:12 UTC
Permalink
(I thought something was weird when nothing had appears on this mailing
list since Jan 1st...)

Executive summary:
I want to change the input line so the input prompt is always visible, and
when the input line scrolls, a reverse "<" or ">" will appear in the direction
that has more text than can be displayed. The reason I want to do this is
because this would make it easier for me to support wide characters in the
input line, taking us closer to unicode support.

It was in this place that I would going to include a long, rambling,
boring discussion about what the tradeoffs were, but then I realized that
I just don't have all of the ducks in a row to give an exhaustive defense
of why I am interested in making this change.

What I can tell you is sometimes the input prompt is visible, and sometimes
it is not, and because the input prompt is output differently from the
input line, this makes counting columns a vexing task. It would be much
easier to handle the input line if I knew the input prompt was always visible,
and always took up X columns, and that I could allocate the rest of the
columns to the contents of the input prompt.

I sincerely state that it is my belief this would make it easier to rid epic
of the lame "one byte == one column" assumption that holds us back from
being able to support unicode (utf-8) input.

If you really are attached to the way the input prompt is handled now
(with it initially being visible, but not being visible after you type a
bunch of stuff), please, do say something!

What does anybody think of this?
Jeremy
Chip Norkus
2007-04-01 05:21:02 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jeremy Nelson
(I thought something was weird when nothing had appears on this mailing
list since Jan 1st...)
I want to change the input line so the input prompt is always visible, and
when the input line scrolls, a reverse "<" or ">" will appear in the direction
that has more text than can be displayed. The reason I want to do this is
because this would make it easier for me to support wide characters in the
input line, taking us closer to unicode support.
This sounds more attractive than what we have now anyway.
Post by Jeremy Nelson
It was in this place that I would going to include a long, rambling,
boring discussion about what the tradeoffs were, but then I realized that
I just don't have all of the ducks in a row to give an exhaustive defense
of why I am interested in making this change.
What I can tell you is sometimes the input prompt is visible, and sometimes
it is not, and because the input prompt is output differently from the
input line, this makes counting columns a vexing task. It would be much
easier to handle the input line if I knew the input prompt was always visible,
and always took up X columns, and that I could allocate the rest of the
columns to the contents of the input prompt.
I sincerely state that it is my belief this would make it easier to rid epic
of the lame "one byte == one column" assumption that holds us back from
being able to support unicode (utf-8) input.
If you really are attached to the way the input prompt is handled now
(with it initially being visible, but not being visible after you type a
bunch of stuff), please, do say something!
What does anybody think of this?
Jeremy
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