PuTTY wish resize-altscr

summary: Resizing window has nasty effects on alternate screen
class: wish: This is a request for an enhancement.
difficulty: fun: Just needs tuits, and not many of them.
priority: low: We aren't sure whether to fix this or not.
present-in: 2003-01-14
fixed-in: 2003-03-08 (0.54) (0.55) (0.56) (0.57) (0.58) (0.59) (0.60) (0.61) (0.62)

Suppose you run a server-side application which switches to the alternate terminal screen. While running this application, you decide you could do with some more vertical space, so you make the window taller. A SIGWINCH is sent to the remote process and it adjusts to the new screen size; no problem there.

Now, when you quit the application and the primary terminal screen is restored, something weird seems to happen. It looks to me as if the previous contents of the primary screen are restored somewhere near the bottom of the now-taller window, while the cursor is restored somewhere near the top.

I'm not entirely sure how this should be handled - for instance, there's an argument in favour of pulling lines out of the scrollback and putting them back into the primary screen, as happens when you resize without the alternate screen active. But certainly it would be a good start for the cursor position to match up to the screen contents!

SGT, 2003-03-07: Just accepted a patch from Richard Boulton which fixes this.

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(last revision of this bug record was at 2004-11-16 15:27:00 +0000)