starred/terminal
1
0
Fork 0
mirror of https://github.com/microsoft/terminal.git synced 2026-02-03 21:25:34 +00:00
Code Issues 19.0k Packages Projects Releases 20 Wiki Activity

Prevent flickering due to scrolling when terminal is resized and cursor is off-screen #8514

New Issue
Open
opened 2026-01-31 01:31:24 +00:00 by claunia · 7 comments
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:31:24 +00:00
Owner
Copy Link

Originally created by @joaobzrr on GitHub (May 22, 2020).

I've opened an issue about this before, but I still don't understand how to solve this problem (if it's solvable at all). It seems to me that, if a resize happens and the cursor gets pushed off-screen, then that will always trigger a scroll, which the application can detect and scroll the viewport back up and redraw the screen. The problem is this will introduce flickering as the application states before and after the resize will be separated by a third intermediary state in which the viewport was scrolled down. So far I see no way to have smooth, non-layout-breaking resizing if resizing can cause the viewport to scroll. So I have a couple questions:

  1. Is there a way to prevent this flickering from happening?
  2. If it is impossible to prevent auto scrolling when cursor is pushed off-screen, would always having the cursor at the next to last line and maybe polling frequently enough mitigate this issue?
  3. Couldn't an application just opt-out of this behavior. Maybe there could be a console mode that you could set to always have the cursor within the screen if the window is resized that would work only when an application switches to the alternate screen buffer.
Originally created by @joaobzrr on GitHub (May 22, 2020). I've opened an issue about this before, but I still don't understand how to solve this problem (if it's solvable at all). It seems to me that, if a resize happens and the cursor gets pushed off-screen, then that will always trigger a scroll, which the application can detect and scroll the viewport back up and redraw the screen. The problem is this will introduce flickering as the application states before and after the resize will be separated by a third intermediary state in which the viewport was scrolled down. So far I see no way to have smooth, non-layout-breaking resizing if resizing can cause the viewport to scroll. So I have a couple questions: 1. Is there a way to prevent this flickering from happening? 2. If it is impossible to prevent auto scrolling when cursor is pushed off-screen, would always having the cursor at the next to last line and maybe polling frequently enough mitigate this issue? 3. Couldn't an application just opt-out of this behavior. Maybe there could be a console mode that you could set to always have the cursor within the screen if the window is resized that would work only when an application switches to the alternate screen buffer.
claunia added the Issue-QuestionNeeds-Tag-FixProduct-Meta labels 2026-01-31 01:31:24 +00:00
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:31:25 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@zadjii-msft commented on GitHub (Jun 9, 2020):

Could you link the previous discussion? I'm having a hard time finding it in the backlog.

IMO, if you're creating a commandline application that's drawing to the entire viewport (like vim, emacs, etc), then the right way to do this is with the alternate screen buffer. This will create a second virtual buffer that you can use to draw to the entire screen, which doesn't have any sort of scrollback to deal with.

See The Alternate Screen Buffer for more details

@zadjii-msft commented on GitHub (Jun 9, 2020): Could you link the previous discussion? I'm having a hard time finding it in the backlog. IMO, if you're creating a commandline application that's drawing to the entire viewport (like `vim`, `emacs`, etc), then the _right_ way to do this is with the alternate screen buffer. This will create a second virtual buffer that you can use to draw to the entire screen, which doesn't have any sort of scrollback to deal with. See [The Alternate Screen Buffer](https://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html#h2-The-Alternate-Screen-Buffer) for more details
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:31:25 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@joaobzrr commented on GitHub (Jun 11, 2020):

Previous issue was #4181. By the way, I am using the alternate screen buffer and I still get this problem.

@joaobzrr commented on GitHub (Jun 11, 2020): Previous issue was #4181. By the way, I *am* using the alternate screen buffer and I still get this problem.
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:31:25 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@zadjii-msft commented on GitHub (Jun 11, 2020):

Wait lemme just clarify something, are you using the alt buffer in conhost or in the Windows Terminal? The Terminal unfortunately doesn't support the alt buffer quite yet (#381), so that'll definitely cause problems, but I'd think that the alt buffer in conhost would be fine...

@zadjii-msft commented on GitHub (Jun 11, 2020): Wait lemme just clarify something, are you using the alt buffer in _conhost_ or in the Windows Terminal? The Terminal unfortunately doesn't support the alt buffer quite yet (#381), so that'll _definitely_ cause problems, but I'd think that the alt buffer in conhost would be fine...
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:31:25 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@ghost commented on GitHub (Jun 15, 2020):

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has been marked as requiring author feedback but has not had any activity for 4 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 3 days of this comment.

@ghost commented on GitHub (Jun 15, 2020): This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has been marked as requiring author feedback but has not had any activity for **4 days**. It will be closed if no further activity occurs **within 3 days of this comment**.
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:31:25 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@joaobzrr commented on GitHub (Jun 17, 2020):

I'll test using conhost and get back to you.

@joaobzrr commented on GitHub (Jun 17, 2020): I'll test using conhost and get back to you.
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:31:26 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@joaobzrr commented on GitHub (Jun 17, 2020):

Okay, I can confirm the same problem occurs while using the alt buffer in conhost.

@joaobzrr commented on GitHub (Jun 17, 2020): Okay, I can confirm the same problem occurs while using the alt buffer in conhost.
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:31:26 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@DHowett commented on GitHub (Jun 26, 2020):

Thanks for the confirmation 😄

@DHowett commented on GitHub (Jun 26, 2020): Thanks for the confirmation :smile:
Sign in to join this conversation.
No Branch/Tag Specified
Branches Tags
Labels
Clear labels
⛺ Reserved
A11yCO
A11yMAS
A11ySev1
A11ySev2
A11ySev3
A11yTTValidated
A11yUsable
A11yVoiceAccess
A11yWCAG
Area-Accessibility
Area-AtlasEngine
Area-AzureShell
Area-Build
Area-Build
Area-Chat
Area-CmdPal
Area-CodeHealth
Area-Commandline
Area-CookedRead
Area-DefApp
Area-Extensibility
Area-Fonts
Area-GroupPolicy
Area-i18n
Area-Input
Area-Interaction
Area-Interop
Area-Localization
Area-Output
Area-Performance
Area-Portable
Area-Quality
Area-Remoting
Area-Rendering
Area-Schema
Area-Server
Area-Settings
Area-SettingsUI
Area-ShellExtension
Area-ShellExtension
Area-ShellExtension
Area-Suggestions
Area-Suggestions
Area-TerminalConnection
Area-TerminalControl
Area-Theming
Area-UserInterface
Area-VT
Area-Windowing
Area-WPFControl
AutoMerge
Blocking-Ingestion
Culprit-Centennial
Culprit-WinUI
Disability-All
Disability-Blind
Disability-LowVision
Disability-Mobility
External-Blocked-WinUI3
Fixed
Gathering-Data
good first issue
HCL-E+D
HCL-WindowsTerminal
Help Wanted
Impact-Compatibility
Impact-Compliance
Impact-Correctness
Impact-Visual
In-PR
InclusionBacklog
InclusionBacklog-Windows TerminalWin32
InclusionCommitted-202206
Issue-Bug
Issue-Docs
Issue-Feature
Issue-Feature
Issue-Question
Issue-Samples
Issue-Scenario
Issue-Task
Needs-Attention
Needs-Author-Feedback
Needs-Bisect
Needs-Discussion
Needs-Repro
Needs-Tag-Fix
Needs-Tag-Fix
Needs-Triage
No-Recent-Activity
Priority-0
Priority-1
Priority-2
Priority-3
Product-Cmd.exe
Product-Colortool
Product-Colortool
Product-Colortool
Product-Conhost
Product-Conpty
Product-Meta
Product-Powershell
Product-Terminal
Product-WSL
pull-request
Mirrored from GitHub Pull Request
 Resolution-Answered
Resolution-By-Design
Resolution-Duplicate
Resolution-External
Resolution-Fix-Available
Resolution-Fix-Committed
Resolution-No-Repro
Resolution-Won't-Fix
Severity-Blocking
Severity-Crash
Severity-DataLoss
spam
this-will-be-a-breaking-change
Tracking-External
WindowsTerminal_Win32
Work-Item
zAskModeBug
zInbox-Bug
No Label Issue-Question Needs-Tag-Fix Product-Meta
Milestone
No items
No Milestone
Projects
Clear projects
No project
Assignees
Clear assignees
claunia
No Assignees
1 Participants
Notifications
Due Date
No due date set.
Dependencies

No dependencies set.

Reference: starred/terminal#8514
Delete Branch "%!s()"

Deleting a branch is permanent. Although the deleted branch may continue to exist for a short time before it actually gets removed, it CANNOT be undone in most cases. Continue?