Bug 136304

Summary:	konsole doesn't support history scrollbar when embedding
Product:	[Applications] konsole	Reporter:	Thierry Vignaud <tvignaud>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Konsole Developer <konsole-devel>
Status:	RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Severity:	normal
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Mandriva RPMs
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Thierry Vignaud 2006-10-25 19:03:14 UTC

Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.5.5)
Installed from:    Mandriva RPMs
Compiler:          gcc version 4.1.1 
OS:                Linux

when a screen (http://www.gnu.org/software/screen) is embedded into konsole, konsole doesn't enable to make use of the vertical scrollbar (aka, it doesn't store the terminal history, unlike rxvt and xterm)

Comment 1 Robert Knight 2006-10-26 01:55:52 UTC

GNU Screen provides its own scrollback mechanism - which the terminal programs don't know about.  Hence the vertical scrollbar is not usable in xterm, Konsole or gnome terminal.

Type "man screen" in the terminal and search for 'scrollback' for more information on this feature.

The only way to make the scrollbar work with GNU Screen, as far as I know, would be for Konsole to have specially written support for this.  I believe that gnome-terminal will gain this feature in the future.

Comment 2 Thierry Vignaud 2006-10-26 13:47:54 UTC

No.
Unlike what you said, it works smoothly with xterm, rxvt, ... (just tested).

Comment 3 Robert Knight 2006-10-26 17:09:00 UTC

I tested with xterm as well when I closed the report, and it did not work (as I expected) - make sure that you don't have Konsole running before you do the test.  

There are two screens in the terminal.  The default one which is scrollable and where most output will appear.  The alternate one is used by applications such as Vi, mc and cgdb.  The alternate screen is not scrollable.

GNU Screen uses the alternate screen by default, which isn't scrollable in Konsole, xterm or gnome-terminal (I have not tested rxvt).  

See this GNU Screen FAQ, and specifically the entry "Q:	My xterm scrollbar does not work with screen."

http://www4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/~jnweiger/screen-faq.html

The same trick should work in Konsole.

Comment 4 Thierry Vignaud 2006-10-26 17:53:56 UTC

All I see is that in both xterm & rxvt, when I'm using screen, when I fill the terminal with more lines it has, its scrollbar "shrinks" and I'm able to browse off-screen terminal contents (its "history") wheras with konsole, the scrollbar is fixed and doesn't enable to see previous lines.

Comment 5 Robert Knight 2006-10-26 21:56:53 UTC

> All I see is that in both xterm & rxvt, when I'm using screen, 
> when I fill the terminal with more lines it has, its scrollbar "shrinks" 
> and I'm able to browse off-screen terminal contents (its "history") 
> wheras with konsole, the scrollbar is fixed and doesn't enable to see 
> previous lines. 

As you can see from the screen FAQ I linked to above, that is not the expected behaviour in xterm.

Run a program that produces lots of output (so that the xterm scrollbar becomes enabled) and type 'screen' to start the screen program in xterm, a welcome page should show up.  Can you scroll up whilst the welcome page is showing?

Comment 6 Robert Knight 2007-07-09 01:04:34 UTC

No replies received to earlier comments.  Closing for now since the current behaviour is what I would expect to see.