[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#979636: alsamixer: provide a better way to quit than Esc+q

[Thorsten Glaser]

tags 979636 - unreproducible
thanks

Elimar Riesebieter dixit:

>I can quit alsamixer on two different ways:
>
>Hitting <ESC> once or

Hitting Esc once does not do anything.

Oh wait, after… *retries and counts* hm no.

This is fun. I run alsamixer under GNU screen, and
it is gone if I press Esc then switch to another tab
and back, even with virtually no delay.

Lemme retry this in plain xterm… where indeed just
Esc exits this.

I can only assume that this is because GNU screen sees
the Esc and knows it is the first byte of a VT100-style
control message and therefore has to buffer it because
it needs to intercept these messages. When switching the
tab it “knows” the Esc is not and sends it to alsamixer.

This is the very reason using Esc under Unix to do
anything is *extremely* bad design, because it is also
the first character of an extended key sequence; for
example the F3 key is Esc + O + R really.

>hitting <ALT> q simultaneously

There is no Alt key on Unix. Pressing Alt-q gives me ñ
(mostly because this is how my keyboard layout produces
umlauts).

From having used irssi a bit I know that when people
write Alt-{X} for TUI applications they really mean
Esc+{X} because this is *one* of the ways terminal
emulators (especially these intended to be used with
Emacs) can handle an “Alt” key; in xterm this is even
configurable (“Meta Sends Escape” in the menu that
pops up when you press and hold Ctrl and the left mouse
button). This is, however, directly contrary to how I
type necessary charactes like äöüß for my language I
cannot use this, so Esc+q it is / would be, which is
why I’m asking for a more Unix-native way to exit this
program… especially considering that it is specific to
ALSA which is specific to Linux, so we should be using
Linux-native UI concepts not those from an MS-DOS® world.

>BTW, the termination is given by design. Changes should be discussed
>with upstream.

Which is why I tagged this bug upstream and gave it a
low severity… you as maintainer have a _much_ better
relationship with upstream than I do and can forward
this more easily and with larger chance of success.

bye,
//mirabilos
-- 
15:39⎜«mika:#grml» mira|AO: "mit XFree86® wär’ das nicht passiert" - muhaha
15:48⎜<thkoehler:#grml> also warum machen die xorg Jungs eigentlich alles
kaputt? :)    15:49⎜<novoid:#grml> thkoehler: weil sie als Kinder nie den
gebauten Turm selber umschmeissen durften?	-- ~/.Xmodmap wonders…