Re: comint-carriage-motion causes severe problems.

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

You wrote,

    Many interactive programs in unix use CR and BS characters in their
    output to try to update a single line of output (e.g., in progress
    indicators).

However, Teirlinck reports this:

      I know programs which, when ran from a shell-buffer will
    intersperse their output with repeats and ^H's.  However,
    comint-carriage-motion makes these problems worse rather than solving
    them.  Without the function, the output looks ugly, but is
    readable. With the function, the output is unrecognizable.

It seems that you both agree that comint-carriage-motion
should be turned off in ielm, but disagree about what its
effects are in shell buffers.

Luc, could you please give some examples of programs where
comint-carriage-motion makes things worse, and show what the output
looks like both with and without comint-carriage-motion?

Miles, could you please show an example where the feature is
beneficial?

By looking at them, it may perhaps be possible to figure out a
heuristic for handling more of the cases in a reasonable way.