GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 114334
string "xterm" (repeated) is added to input
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Package: gnome-terminal Severity: minor Version: 2.2.1 Synopsis: string "xterm" (repeated) is added to input Bugzilla-Product: gnome-terminal Bugzilla-Component: general Description: Description of Problem: when cat'ing files that contain some binary characters, sometimes the string "xtermxterm" or similar is added as if the corresponding keys were pressed. Example: johannes:~$ tail .gcvsrc -c500 <text with some binary characters follows>johannes:~$ xterm [xterm starts] johannes:~$ This seems to happen on characters \05 \058 and \059 (octal numbers, tested with echo -e '...') ------- Bug moved to this database by unknown@bugzilla.gnome.org 2003-06-03 07:41 ------- Reassigning to the default owner of the component, hp@redhat.com.
[Note that octal numbers don't have 8s and 9s in them... ;) ] This is not a bug. Or at least, it wasn't. gnome-terminal uses vte to emulate the terminal, and vte by default simulates an xterm. Xterms used to have a 1-char capability (which is not listed in any of the termcap files I have installed, but oh well; it is inherited from VT100 terms) known in ascii as ENQ and called `return-terminal-status', with code \005, upon reception of which an xterm was supposed to respond by sending to the child (the shell, usually) the terminal name, which of course is `xterm', or, if it is there, the value of the X resource answerbackString. This is described for example in http://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.2.1/doc/ctlseqs.TXT (and versions of that file in earlier versions of XFree86) The observed behaviour of echo -e '\05' is then ok. But... For some reason (probably that people were seeing the `xterm' string pop up randomly (who has read ctlseqs.TXT, after all ;)), the XFree guys made an incompatible change in the xterm termcap in their last release, and the ctlseqs file for XFree 4.3.0 (http://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.3.0/doc/ctlseqs.TXT) states that xterms should now respond by default with the empty string to an ENQ (my installed xterm, which is 4.2.99.903 (this is not the latest version, which is 4.3.99.5), does comply with this) At most, then, this bug should be changed to a vte bug, requesting for an update in its xterm simulation. [I wonder what the xterm from the x consortium does for ENQ...]
I've just filed a bug on vte on this, and made this one be blocked by it. As soon as that gets done, this will be solved.
In cases like this, simply moving the gnome-terminal bug to vte and choosing "reassign bug to owner of selected component" is the easiest thing (no need to file a new bug). Only reason to keep a g-t bug open is if there's work to be done in g-t itself.
Since this wasn't moved to vte, I'll simply mark as a duplicate of the new bug... *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 116495 ***