[BRLTTY] Linux console hacking (was: Re: Footsteps towards better accessibility in Linux)

[Aura Kelloniemi]

Hi,

On 2025-05-21 at 12:33 -0400, Nicolas Pitre <nico at fluxnic.net> wrote:
 > For the record, in the last month or so, I've contributed a total of 24 
 > patches modifying the Linux console that are on their way for inclusion 
 > in Linux v6.16.

You seem to be very good at both convincing the kernel people, but also have
the knowledge of the kernel console driver.

As stated before, improved keyboard support would be my request of improvement
#1, but there is one thing that would be easy to fix and would benefit all of
us:

Linux console does not have alternate screen support. Probably all modern
terminal emulators have a notion of an alternate screen buffer. Applications
can switch between these screen buffers with an escape sequence. This is used
to preserve original contents of a terminal while an interactive application
is running. Applications which utilize this include less, emacs, nano, mutt,
lynx, and almost any TUI application.

Supporting this requires recognizing the escape sequences and allocating space
for the alternate screen buffer, which effectively doubles the amount of
memory allocated for screen contents.

Do you Nicolas think this could be accepted, and would you like to do this?
This is an unfair request, of course, but if I start to look at the kernel
code, and start to learn the kernel API, it will take days and code quality
probably is not what kernel developers are expecting.

 > They cover:

 > - Native support for bracketed paste (with a hook for BRLTTY's benefit)

Did you add documentation for this in the console_codes man page?

-- 
Aura