Re: rxvt problem: Prompt doesn't look very nice

[Eric Blake <ebb9 at byu dot net>]

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According to Brian Dessent on 3/25/2005 1:00 AM:
> 
> The first line above of PS1 is an escape sequence that tells the
> terminal to change the window title to the given string.  Emacs
> apparently does not support that escape sequence, so you'll have to
> modify your prompt.  The Cygwin default is
> 
> PS1='\[\033]0;\w\007\n\033[32m\]\u@\h \[\033[33m\w\033[0m\]\n$ '

And this is an evil default in /etc/profile, because it does not correctly
delineate printing vs non-printing characters, and hence messes up bash in
 computing prompt width.  Can we please get base-files updated, to
actually use \[ and \] only around non-printing characters?  Also, bash
supports \e for \033, and \a for \007, and uses \$ to print $ for normal
users vs # for root (man bash, search for PROMPTING for other cool escape
sequences).  I would prefer the cygwin default for bash to be:

PS1='\[\e]0;\w\a\e[32m\]\n\u@\h \[\e[33m\]\w\[\e[0m\]\n\$ '

> See google or
> <http://www.dee.ufcg.edu.br/~rrbrandt/tools/ansi.html> for more details.

That page only covered ANSI sequences, or "\e[...".  It did not cover
xterm sequences, or "\e]..."  See
http://networking.ringofsaturn.com/Unix/Bash-prompts.php for details on
setting the xterm title and icon using "\e]0;...\a", "\e]1;...\a", and
"\e]2;...\a".  This page also recommends examining $TERM before setting
PS1 to use \e]..., since it those escapes work when TERM is cygwin or
xterm, but don't work when it is emacs or vt100.

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             ebb9@byu.net
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