Editline library improvement

Alex Semenyaka alex at semenyaka.ru
Tue May 18 17:12:21 PDT 2004


Colleagues,

I'm trying to improve editline library in order to it would fit my needs and
fix some bugs.

First of all I'd like to fix the way it handles signals. Now the signal handler
at it's end restores the old handler and send interrupt recived to the whole
process group. Well, I do not like the last step but some third-party software
might rely upon that [strange] behaviour so I would like to have a way to turn
it off. But the first step, the restoration of the old hadler, is just wrong for
signal SIGWINCH. The result is that application cannot track down the changes of
the window size automatically more than one time per line (with the standard
handler). That is definitely A Bad Thing. I would say that SIGWINCH needs just
different handler.

I'd like to hear you opinions how editline should behave. Actually I would like
to change the library but do it smoothly and I do not going to break the
existing applications.

Also in future I want to see in the editline library:
1) a timeout for the input,
2) callbacks for the events (periodic events, arriving new data on the file
descriptor from the given set),
3) an interface to obtain editline's idea of terminal state. Ridiculos, but
current interface allows to CHANGE it, to PRINT it to the user but does not
allow to RETURN them to the program. Could somebody explain why does user need
to SEE them more than program to WORK with them? Well, that is simple to add.

Those changes can be also made is different ways so the question is which will
be more convenient for people who are going to use the library.

Any comments would be gracefully accepted!

-- 
Sincerely,
Alex Semenyaka


More information about the freebsd-current mailing list