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

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Samuel Thibault (2025/05/22 20:34 +0200):
> Dave Mielke, le jeu. 22 mai 2025 14:22:33 -0400, a ecrit:
> > [quoted lines by Aura Kelloniemi on 2025/05/22 at 20:20 +0300]
> > >But implementing alternate screen 
> > 
> > I find myself wondering what you're referring to. Are you sure you aren't thinking of shell job control (i.e. where you press Ctrl-Z to temporarily suspend the TUI in order to run shell commands)?
> 
> No, it's really two storages in the same terminal, and you can switch
> between the two. Programs have gotten used to having to do this by
> themselves when the terminal doesn't support it, but having it supported
> improves support, efficiency, etc. and provides some support that you
> can't have otherwise. For instance, start an editor such as emacs or vi,
> and quit it. With the alternate screen support (which they make use of
> then) you will get back to the content you had before starting the
> editor. Also, if you run an external command from the editor (e.g. :sh
> in vim), you will also get back to the content that you had before
> starting the editor. That can be really convenient when you had run some
> stuff on the shell, and edit some file only temporarily and get back to
> your shell work.

Thank you Dave forhaving asked and thank you Samuel for your response.

I simply didn't have the concept but yeah, this makes a lot of sense to
me! How many times do I find myself regretting that I did run mutt, lynx
or an other ncuses-based app because I have then lost wha was on the
screen before I did that.

I read you Nicolas when you said 63 virtual consoles is a lot and I
admit that in practice I never find myself out of consoles, actuallyfar
from that, btu I also tend to assume thtat thememory quantities we are
talking about are not that big so why not have that alternate screen
content implemented in the individual consoles, rather than stealing
another one and basically dividing the number of available consoles by
two?

Seb.