From: Adrian K. <ak...@gm...> - 2007-02-20 03:40:03
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On Monday 19 February 2007 20:55, Matthew Ford wrote: > I recently tried out the "gaim-text" console interface, which is included > in current beta versions of Gaim. I have been primarily using gaim-text for a few weeks now (rather than the GTK version) for the ability to reattach anywhere. It also seems stabler than GTK Gaim for me. > > With due respect to the developers, I must say I was disappointed. A > keyboard-driven ASCII window manager inside a console is a neat idea, but > not a practical one. There were several problems: > > - the behavior of the keyboard controls is clumsy and non-intuitive. > After a considerable period playing with the interface, I still > couldn't figure out when to press left/right, up/down or enter. I have had similar issues, especially when nothing seemed to work when resizing or to exit a menu. > - the window resizing controls do not work properly. The text inside the > window fails to realign itself properly to the size of the window, and > the border of the window changes permanently to an ugly blue pattern > of letters when I resize it. I see the same issue from time to time, except I just get blue blocks. > - I can't get the ALT controls to work from a remote SSH session (maybe > a problem with my X11 software, admittedly). Since the whole point of > a console interface is to enable remote control, there should be > alternative controls for people with ALT problems - like the ESC-ESC > sequence in Emacs. Gaim-text is unusable without the ALT controls. I have not encountered this, but I do have a device running Linux and gaim-text (either natively or over SSH) that has no ALT keys! I tried to rebind them to Ctrl+(capital letter) but it did not work well. I agree that an alternate beginning sequence would be helpful. I also have noticed that it is impossible to add buddies or edit their information from gaim-text. All in all, I and others love gaim-text. If there's a way that I can help (without programming -- I don't yet know C), let me know. -- Adrian Kreher |