Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!geneva.rutgers.edu!hedrick From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: Visual searching Message-ID: Date: 1 May 89 01:18:00 GMT References: <192@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <58989@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Distribution: na Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 25 To: spolsky-joel@CS.YALE.EDU Spurious ^Q commands indicate that your terminal can't keep up without output, and is doing XON/XOFF. There are several approaches, including changing emacs to use different commands for search and quote. But I recommend doing two things: - set options on the terminal to make it as fast as possible. This probably means turning off smooth scroll. If the terminal has different window sizes and type fonts, timing may depend upon the setup. - modify your termcap entries by increasing the amount of padding for things that take time, such as insert and delete line and character, and scrolling. You'll need to do this experimentally. I find the whole idea of terminals that issue XOFF unacceptable, but DEC seems to have started it with the VT100. Once you accept that the terminal will uses XOFF and XON to control output, the theory is that exact timings become non-critical, so terminal vendors don't seem to worry about how fast their terminals are. My recommendation is that you leave XON/XOFF turned on in the terminal, and modify termcap so that there is enough padding that XON/XOFF are never actually generated. Then when you are outside emacs (and other programs that use termcap), XON/XOFF will work, but when you go into a program that uses termcap, you'll get enough padding that XON is never triggered.