How do I get vi to know my window size?

[Paul Fox]

rich wrote:
 > On Wed, Sep 20, 2006 at 07:49:33PM -0400, Rob Landley wrote:
 > > Anyway, I can teach bbsh that when it's launched
 > > interactive, do the probing thing if standard querying
 > > doesn't work to determine terminal size.  That'll set $LINES
 > > and $COLUMNS for its child programs, and svn 16167 should
 > > theoretically be able to take it from there...
 > 
 > How do you avoid eating (and possibly choking on) user
 > keystrokes already in the input buffer?  The only way I can
 > think to avoid that is with some sort of tricky extra
 > buffering layer.  Maybe it doesn't matter but I find it
 > annoying if I've typed ahead before a program starts and some
 > of the keystrokes get lost.

i agree.  this certainly reinforces that this feature should be
very optional.

i'm a little surprised that rob thinks it should be in the shell. 
in the absence of LINES and COLUMNS settings, programs that care
should all be asking the driver.  so it doesn't have to be a
parent process that determines the size.  in fact, if the parent
shell sets and exports LINES and COLUMNS, it seems like this will
only make it harder to deal with window size changes later on. 
i'd vote for creating a separate applet (much like x11's resize)
which can be invoked manually or from .profile or wherever.

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at brightstareng.com