clearing the screen without losing anything?

clearing the screen without losing anything?

[Andy Spiegl]

I was just wondering whether it's possible to clear the screen (with Ctrl-l)
such that the screen contents is pushed into the terminal's (i.e. xterm)
scrollback buffer.

Uhm, I am not even sure whether that's a zsh or xterm issue?

Thanks,
 Andy.

-- 
 If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times,
 does he become disoriented?       (George Carlin, US comedian)

Re: clearing the screen without losing anything?

[Seth Kurtzberg]

That's an xterm issue.  xterm does have a logging facility built in, and it wouldn't be impossible to clear, read some part of the log, and redisplay it.  I suspect, however, that the result would be exactly what was on the screen before you cleared it, so it probably won't solve your problem.  Which brings to mind:  What is your problem, specifically?  Perhaps someone will have an idea about how to solve it.

Seth

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:13:49 +0100
Andy Spiegl <zsh.Andy@spiegl.de> wrote:

> I was just wondering whether it's possible to clear the screen (with Ctrl-l)
> such that the screen contents is pushed into the terminal's (i.e. xterm)
> scrollback buffer.
> 
> Uhm, I am not even sure whether that's a zsh or xterm issue?
> 
> Thanks,
>  Andy.
> 
> -- 
>  If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times,
>  does he become disoriented?       (George Carlin, US comedian)
> 


-- 
Seth Kurtzberg <seth@cql.com>
Hardware and Software Engineer

Re: clearing the screen without losing anything?

[Mikael Magnusson]

On 16/01/2008, Andy Spiegl <zsh.Andy@spiegl.de> wrote:
> I was just wondering whether it's possible to clear the screen (with Ctrl-l)
> such that the screen contents is pushed into the terminal's (i.e. xterm)
> scrollback buffer.
>
> Uhm, I am not even sure whether that's a zsh or xterm issue?
>
> Thanks,
>  Andy.

You can create a custom widget that echos some blank lines, and then
clears the screen.

function myclear() {zle -I;repeat $((LINES-2)) echo;clear}
zle -N myclear
bindkey '^L' myclear

-- 
Mikael Magnusson

Re: clearing the screen without losing anything?

[Bart Schaefer]

On Jan 16,  4:13pm, Andy Spiegl wrote:
}
} I was just wondering whether it's possible to clear the screen (with Ctrl-l)
} such that the screen contents is pushed into the terminal's (i.e. xterm)
} scrollback buffer.
} 
} Uhm, I am not even sure whether that's a zsh or xterm issue?

Some of each.  Ctrl-l (the clear-screen widget) is implemented by sending
the "clear screen" terminal control string; what the terminal does with
that is out of zsh's hands, but zsh doesn't have to send that string.

    clear-screen() { repeat $LINES print '' >/dev/tty ; zle -I }
    zle -N clear-screen

Re: clearing the screen without losing anything?

[Andy Spiegl]

Great!  I combined Mikael's and Bart's solution into:

 clear-screen() { zle -I;repeat $((LINES-2)) echo;clear }
 zle -N clear-screen

Bart's solution works, too, but the prompt ends up in the bottom line
instead of the first line.

Wonderful, I am happy now :-)
 Andy.

-- 
 Many would never speak with a full mouth, but do it with an empty head.
                                                      (Orson Welles)