Re: *shell* jumps up and down

[Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>]

W. Greenhouse wrote:
> Looks like it's a comint-wide problem, not just shell.el.

Ah!  Comint!  I should have looked there.  That was the right place.

> I did some testing, and it seems--in Emacs 24.2, anyway--that this
> behavior is triggered by the combination of a `scroll-conservatively'
> value of <100 and `comint-scroll-show-maximum-output' set to t (which is
> the default).  Changing either of these lets Emacs scrolling behavior do
> the same thing it does in the rest of Emacs.

The problem seems to be with comint-scroll-show-maximum-output
interacting badly with automatic scrolling.  Either by themself would
be okay.  But the combination of them together is annoying.

Thank you for pointing me to comint-scroll-show-maximum-output!  That
is the answer for my problem.  I have done this and then the annoyance
I noted is fixed.  At least so far with my minimal use and testing.

  (setq comint-scroll-show-maximum-output nil)

But for the archive I could definite see people liking the opposite
behavior desiring this opposite behavior fix.  Each to their own.

  (setq scroll-conservatively 10000)

> This works in 24, anyway, but the scrolling stuff does seem to be in a
> state of flux; I've noticed that erc-scrolltobottom-mode does some
> jumping around now in 24, for example.  Possibly one of the NEWS items
> under "Scrolling changes" covers this, but if so, I don't understand.

I tested this on Emacs 24 (Debian Unstable and Wheezy 7) and Emacs 23
(Debian Stable Squeeze 6) and both behave the same and the same fix
addresses both of them nicely.  My sanity is restored!

I haven't been using erc but have been thinking about it.  I will keep
an eye open for problems there.

Thanks!
Bob