Support for unexpected C0 inside CSI sequence about vtm HOT 4 CLOSED

A couple comments:

• UTF-8 processing as per the Unicode spec should happen before all VT processing, e.g. "decode everything, then apply VT parser". So the 8-bit C1 controls will be decoded from 3-byte UTF-8 sequences. Unfortunately X10 encoded mouse protocol (which no one uses anymore, we all use UTF or SGR mode) expects mouse position coordinates to be in 8-bit bytes, so positions outside 160, 64 can corrupt the UTF-8 stream.

• C0's can go into OSC sequences no problem, but ASCII BEL (0x07) is typically used to terminate OSC sequences, along with ST. I don't know why that got started, but now tons of terminals use BEL as their preferred OSC terminator. 🤷‍♀️ But otherwise you should be able to pass CSI's and C0's through OSC OK.

• Don't forget APC. It's used by Kitty image protocol, so at least be able to discard it for a clean display.

• If you're passing negative numbers for CSI inside your own parser, that's fine. But negative numbers inside CSI for protocols that other terminals will see (e.g. mouse mode 1016) is considered a bug by some. xterm is doing it, but we do not know if that is deliberate or an oversight.

• You can also use the semicolon-separated form of SGR 38/48 ("Konsole" encoding), that was at one time a lot more commonly supported out there. But colon-separated is fine too, xterm supports that and many other modern terminals do too.

Glad that doc reference helped. :) I mentioned it because in addition to supporting your own terminal, if you look into others some of them are modeled after that specific parser with very similar state names. It can help having a similar "map" when you are working on bugs for them, or cherry-picking features you'd like for yourself.

(Also happy to see @ismail-yilmaz around. He's got a very nice embeddable terminal of his own. :) )

from vtm.

Have you seen the Paul Flo Williams parser? It might be useful for you. It covers everything except one sequence from VT52 submode (direct cursor position).

from vtm.

Have you seen the Paul Flo Williams parser?

Thanks for the awesome link! This helped a lot in understanding how to deal with control characters like C0 inside sequences. It seems to me that I once saw this document a long time ago, but did not give it due attention.

I understand that if you're going to emulate a real terminal, you should match all observable behavior described in this document, but there are several nuances dictated by realities:

• I need to treat the incoming stream as a sequence of unicode codepoints in UTF-8 format (UTF-8 Everywhere), rather than as an ASCII stream, since there are for example control unicode codepoints like U+2029 'PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR'. You can see the full list of such control codepoints here https://github.com/netxs-group/vtm/blob/a1a0478cede5d6f603dd5152363aba5ab3e320a7/src/netxs/text/unidata.hpp#L155-L162 ... https://github.com/netxs-group/vtm/blob/a1a0478cede5d6f603dd5152363aba5ab3e320a7/src/netxs/text/unidata.hpp#L275-L281
• I need support for negative numbers as CSI parameters. The standard forbids using the minus sign in this way. Moreover, the range of values must be at least int16_t. For example, for reporting the coordinates of the mouse cursor located outside the viewport using the existing protocol. See comment.
• Need to support colons as delimiters for subparameters. For example, to support truecolor.
• I need support for nested CSI sequences in OSC, PM, DCS, etc. This is necessary for example to support colored text in titles (eg OSC 0; CSI 34 m Colored Window Title CSI m ST), as well as for multiline text support: (eg OSC 0; First title line \n Second title line ST). See comment.
  • 

In my implementation, the receiving buffer accumulates data until it sees a completed sequence and a valid (not broken codepoint) UTF-8 sequence at the end, and only then passes this data to the parser. In my case, the sequence CSI 3 ; 1 CSI 2 J will be executed differently than in a compatible parser, and I have not yet decided whether such compatibility should be supported here.

from vtm.

But negative numbers inside CSI for protocols that other terminals will see (e.g. mouse mode 1016) is considered a bug by some. xterm is doing it, but we do not know if that is deliberate or an oversight.

For the record, MidnightCommander's input parser does not discard the entire sequence when it receives a minus sign

https://github.com/MidnightCommander/mc/blob/cbcda8a284ab9e3d5498fb255a5059c9f86c9f46/lib/tty/key.c#L779-L802

and extra characters appear in the input.

I try to only use the minus for those applications that can interpret it correctly (something like DECSET 10060 mode).

from vtm.