Screen flickers when nothing to do

[Martin Albisetti]

I'm not sure which words describe it best, but, using the latest and greatest from trunk (revision 311), while moving the cursor towards the beggining/end of the current text, if it reaches the end, the screen flickers.

It happens with all default operations that have "nothing else to do", which in some terminals provoke a very annoying system beep.

Was this intended, or is it "just me"?

[Chris Jones (cmsj)]

This is very odd, I don't think I've seen something like that. Could you provide a more detailed way of reproducing it?

[Philip Peitsch (philip-peitsch)]

I have the same issue. If I simply open up a screen, then hit the backspace key, the screen flashes continually. I suspected initially that it was compiz-related, but this issue is suffered even when using the metacity windows manager.

So, reproduction steps are:
1) Open a terminator session
2) Hit & hold the backspace key
3) Observe the screen flashing to black rapidly (I have my default colors as black on white so this is very noticable)

[Martin Albisetti (beuno)]

peitschie's description sums it up pretty well.
I also have a black on white setup, and, if it helps, an Intel 945GM graphic card.

[chantra (chantra)]

Thanks for reporting.
I guess the easiest way to properly understand the issue, would be to
see it in a movie.
Can you use Istanbul: http://live.gnome.org/Istanbul
to record the issue, then attach it to the bugg report pls.

cheers

>

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[Philip Peitsch (philip-peitsch)]

I tried to capture it. It did not capture almost at all using Istanbul, there is a brief flash where you see the window turn black, but the full effect is not had. So I have also captured one using 3gp format on my mobile, and included that as well. This demonstrates much more clearly the issue. To clarify, the ONLY flashing is the INSIDE of the terminator window (i.e., not the window frames or scrollbars).

This flash occurs if I tab-complete, hold backspace continually (as was done in the video) etc.

This never used to happen with the previous version of terminator, so I'd be interested as to what drawing changes have been made!

[Philip Peitsch (philip-peitsch)]

Oh, here's the istanbul version as well for comparison!

[chantra (chantra)]

Hi peitschie,

Thanks for attaching the files, it helps a lot in seeing what the issue
is.

Does this also happens with gnome-terminal also?
To me, it sounds like vte is having a hard time to refresh its display.

 status confirmed
 importance medium

On Sun, 2008-06-08 at 08:50 +0000, peitschie wrote:

> I tried to capture it. It did not capture almost at all using Istanbul,
> there is a brief flash where you see the window turn black, but the full
> effect is not had. So I have also captured one using 3gp format on my
> mobile, and included that as well. This demonstrates much more clearly
> the issue. To clarify, the ONLY flashing is the INSIDE of the
> terminator window (i.e., not the window frames or scrollbars).
>
> This flash occurs if I tab-complete, hold backspace continually (as was
> done in the video) etc.
>
> This never used to happen with the previous version of terminator, so
> I'd be interested as to what drawing changes have been made!
>
> ** Attachment added: "flashing_terminator_mobile.3gp"
> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/15121362/flashing_terminator_mobile.3gp
>

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Debuntu deb's repository

[chantra (chantra)]

 status confirmed
 importance medium

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[Philip Peitsch (philip-peitsch)]

Just reporting back to say that this problem does not manifest itself in gnome terminal. And as I stated previously, didn't appear in terminator until I updated to one later than the version that shipped with hardy (the one from the repository listed here, not Beta).

[chantra (chantra)]

Hi peitschie,

I have pushed rev 317 to trunk.
Can you give it a try and let me know if it resolves your issue pls.

cheers,
chantra

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[chantra (chantra)]

As it is a regression, changing milestone to 0.9

  milestone 0.9

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[Nicolas Valcarcel (nvalcarcel)]

Uploaded to ppa for testing.

[Philip Peitsch (philip-peitsch)]

Ah. What a day of learning it has been :-). Short answer is the problem is still unchanged in 317.

[Chris Jones (cmsj)]

That flickering is the terminal bell. From the source for libvte:

 * Controls whether or not the terminal will present a visible bell to the
 * user when the child outputs the "bl" sequence. The terminal
 * will clear itself to the default foreground color and then repaint itself.

Arguably we should be defaulting to the audible bell instead of the visible one (ie holding backspace at an empty prompt would produce a load of beeping rather than flashing).

More interestingly, gnome-terminal is somehow making this happen differently, in that in compiz the window dims on a visual bell, instead of flashing to the foreground colour. More investigation is needed, but this isn't really a bug I think.

[Philip Peitsch (philip-peitsch)]

Yes... the original bug-reporter alluded to that fact. So, if it's not a bug, the next question is how do I disable it? I don't like the bell or the flashing if I can avoid it...

[Chris Jones (cmsj)]

Hi

peitschie wrote:
> a bug, the next question is how do I disable it? I don't like the bell
> or the flashing if I can avoid it...

Interesting point. We currently use a single boolean setting for this,
so you must have either visual or aural bells. You can't have both or
neither.
Perhaps we should change that, in which case this bug is more about that
I guess.

--
Chris Jones

[Philip Peitsch (philip-peitsch)]

Just to confirm, that to get rid of this effect, the easiest way is to enable the Terminal Bell. Since I have the terminal bell silenced in other ways, this causes no issues, and gets rid of the screen flashing.

[Chris Jones (cmsj)]

I have just pushed up a revision into 0.9 which adds the option "force_no_bell". If set to True you will get no beep and no flash.

[Chris Jones (cmsj)]

0.9 has now been released and should fix this.