Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Sun, 28 Mar 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:

> 
> While trying to figure out how the mail menu works (so that my dyslexic 
> roommate can make up his own method of sending mail) I noticed that the 
> two programs which froze up have similar lines in them - mail and Xsetup.  
> In BL2, mail script was different.  In BL3 it includes a line
> 
> echo -e " (\033[1m1\033[m]" 
> (and similar lines with 1m2 1m3 etc.)
> 
> Xsetup includes the line
> echo -e "to run it again, execute \033[1mXsetup\033[m"
> 
> When I try to type 1 (or 2, or Q) in the mail menu nothing happens.
> When I try to type letters A B or C in Xsetup menu nothing happens.
> 
> The problem happens after the script executes Echo -e " (\033[1m......  
> and any other text, before asking the user to enter some character, which
> cannot actually be entered.  Since it is not very reproducible I don't
> know how to test.  Maybe it is something to do with the Intel P54C popad
> bug listed in dmesg?  What does \033[1m etc. do?
> 

A web search found a Russian site which explained that \033[1m makes 
characters in shell scripts bold.  (2m, 3m, etc make them dim, or inverse, 
or blinking).  Steven's mail and Xsetup scripts do indeed have bold for 
the items to be pressed.  This is somehow causing a problem.

In BL2 the 'mail' script is not quite so cleverly written and there are no 
bold characters, and also this problem has not occurred (not being able to 
produce a character onscreen by pressing the key).

The obvious fix is to remove the bold, which I will do in my copies of the 
scripts.