[BRLTTY] Was: Re: Linux console hacking > scroll back buffer

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Thu, 22 May 2025, Dave Mielke wrote:

> [quoted lines by Aura Kelloniemi on 2025/05/22 at 21:54 +0300]
> 
> >When a full-screen program, (like less, emacs or vim) starts, it 
> >activates the alternate screen. It then draws its interface to this 
> >display buffer. Once the program exits (or suspends), it returns the 
> >main screen, thereby also restoring the terminal contents to the 
> >exact same point where they were before the program started.
> 
> This isn't my experience. I logged into a new session in order to get 
> screen out of the picture. Then I tried running vim and less. In 
> either case, when I exited I was on a shell command prompt with the 
> app's (vim or less) final output just above it.

That's because the Linux console doesn't support the alt screen 
functionality. If you try it within tmux you'll get a different result.

I wasn't aware of such functionality before today.


Nicolas