Re: a few small problems

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hello!

> 1. Why do we see ".." in the root dir? It's annoying and misleading. Will
> there be any problems if we just remove it?

It's not misleading for me, but I think it can be safely removed to save screen
space.

> 2. Often mc loses communication with the subshell, even if it is not busy
> with any command. For example, I hit ctrl-o to switch from subshell to the
> panels, go to some other directory, then hit ctrl-o again - oops, I'm still
> in the old dir! I.e. mc did not pass the cd commands to the subshell. So I
> press Enter several times, to scroll several empty prompts, and repeat the
> above, and this time it works.

I don't remember this bug.  Please give enough information to reproduce it
(version, terminal, "mc -V", OS etc).  One case is enough.

> So it seems that when deciding if to pass a
> command to the subshell or not, mc not only needs the subshell to be in the
> "empty prompt" state, but it needs to see several empty prompts before the
> last one. I may get this reason wrong, as I don't fully understand the
> mc/subshell interaction, but the problem is very very annoying. Am I the only
> one experiencing it? What can be done about it? There is an item in the
> latest TODO: "Load subshell prompt when it's ready." - does it have anything
> to do with this problem?

Prompt has a purely "decorative" role - it's whatever is displayed by mc in the
command line.  It has nothing to do with the actual current directory of mc or
the subshell (except when PS1 has the directory in it).

> 3. Another similar problem has appeared after I upgraded to mandrake 9. I'm
> not sure who is to blame for this (mc is the same version) so please help me
> to find out. Namely, I use bash with bold prompt displaying current dir, by
> setting
>
> export PS1="\[\033[0;1m\]\w \$\[\033[0m\] "
>
> However, even when I change dir in the panel (and this change is passed to
> the subshell, see previous point), when I press ctrl-o I see this:
>
> <old prompt, bold> <new prompt, plain>
>
> I.e. old and new prompts are on one line, and the new prompt is not bold. I
> have to press Enter, and then I get the new prompt in bold on its own line.
>
> Any suggestions?

Don't load the prompt from the subshell.  Support PS1 in mc and maybe support
MC_PS1 to override PS1 in mc only.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin