[comp.emacs] Lost characters

sandfort@cs.arizona.edu (Jeff Sandfort) (03/04/91)

Hello,
  I've had a problem using GnuEmacs 18.55 (?) for some time. What happens
is I lose characters from my screen.  They are still there but I can't
see them anymore. ^L rewrites the screen and they are back.  This generally
happens when I insert or delete a character into the middle of a line or
just traverse over some existing characters.  At school using a Wyse 75
terminal things work great but at 2400 baud, Procomm+, and vt100 this 
problem is a tremendous headache.  Any ideas as to a fix.  Anything will
be appreciated.  Thanks,


Jeff Sandfort
sandfort@cs.arizona.edu

barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) (03/05/91)

In article <1014@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> sandfort@cs.arizona.edu (Jeff Sandfort) writes:
>  I've had a problem using GnuEmacs 18.55 (?) for some time. What happens
>is I lose characters from my screen.  They are still there but I can't
>see them anymore. ^L rewrites the screen and they are back.  This generally
>happens when I insert or delete a character into the middle of a line or
>just traverse over some existing characters.  At school using a Wyse 75
>terminal things work great but at 2400 baud, Procomm+, and vt100 this 
>problem is a tremendous headache.  Any ideas as to a fix.  Anything will
>be appreciated.  Thanks,

Sounds like your terminal type is set incorrectly.  Specifically, it sounds
like Emacs thinks you are on a terminal that can insert characters in the
middle of the line, which the VT100 cannot do.  It is sending the "enter
insert mode" escape sequence and then sending the inserted characters, but
the emulator correctly ignores the escape sequence and the characters just
overwrite what was there.

Make sure that you set your Unix terminal type to "vt100" when you login
from the modem.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar

kryszak@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (PETER KRYSZAK) (03/09/91)

We've had this problem with both emacs and nuTPU.  It turns out that
both are sensitive to tab settings.  Use the SETUP key on the terminal
and set the tabs to the default, every 8 positions.  The nuTPU folks
confirmed this sensitivity after we found it through luck.