When scrolling esp. with "less" or "vim" there are sometimes a few characters (or partial characters) missing from the display somewhere. Normally the characters are refreshed (properly redrawn) when you scroll the display a subsequent time. Occasionally, scrolling the display again does not update the questionable characters. I think this is something to do with an "Optimized update" ie. aterm only redrawing those characters that have changed. Has anyone else seen this bug? I am pretty sure it's only aterm that does it, xterm and other apps are working!! BTW: I have transparency mode enabled. I can attach my .Xdefaults if this will be any help in solving the problem. Please advise. Reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: 1. Set some background using "fbsetbg" from fluxbox. I customised the "fbsetbg" script so that it runs "wmsetbg" as the underlying bgsetter. However I don't think the background matters, I'm only including this step for compeleteness. 2. Set transparency mode on via the ".Xdefaults" file. Set geometry = 120x40. 3. Execute "aterm". Execute "vim some_big_file". Scroll around and edit until the problem is revealed. This may take a few minutes, I'm not completely sure. Actual Results: Some garbage on the screen, due to characters being incompletely drawn (top or bottom missing, or a diagonal section that encompasses several characters). Expected Results: Should have drawn complete characters, and should have drawn without missed chars. Portage 2.0.49-r3 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r1, 2.4.20-gentoo-r5) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.20-gentoo-r5 i686 Pentium III (Coppermine) ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-mcpu=i686 -O3 -pipe -funroll-loops" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/share/config /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /var/bind /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-mcpu=i686 -O3 -pipe -funroll-loops" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="sandbox ccache autoaddcvs" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gentoo http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.au.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 oss apm arts avi crypt cups encode foomaticdb gif jpeg libg++ libwww mad mikmod mmx mpeg ncurses nls oggvorbis pdflib png quicktime sdl spell truetype xml2 xmms xv zlib gdbm berkdb slang readline svga java gpm tcpd pam ssl perl python imlib motif opengl X gtk gnome -alsa -kde -qt"
Created attachment 18590 [details] Terminal emulator settings. The filename on my system is: .Xdefaults Just in case this is important to reproduce the bug.
Some more info: Lately I noticed that fluxbox occasionally shows a similar problem ie. some text missed out from one of the popup menus, it's quite hard to reproduce but I think it happens more when the system is fully loaded. eg. compiling in the background. Moving the mouse over the questionable menu item is enough to make it redraw properly. Anyway, it looks as if this may be a generalised X11 configuration issue, or kernel or driver issue, rather than being localised to the aterm program as I had thought. It MAY be a fluxbox issue. Incidentally the background is always correct, it's just a case of missing characters or partial characters. So, if it's a driver issue it's not at the lowest level, it's in the text-drawing. I am planning to set my XFree86 to use the "Linux kernel framebuffer" instead of loading the driver for my video card. I will then compare performance. Depending on the results of that test, I also plan to try copying the harddrive that shows the problem onto a PC with different video hardware, to see if the problem persists. I'll update this bugsheet as I go. As I dig in the config files I'll also make some notes as to the exact driver versions, the configured amount of video RAM, and anything I can think of. Sorry, haven't had time yet! cheers, Nick
"Transparency" in X is currently very much a hack. Some window managers and terminal emulators aim to emulate transparency by copying the root pixmap. As things change, the application updates, usually correctly, but sometimes not. Such oddities that you are experiencing seem to stem from the terminal not updating when it should, the work around being to for an update by changing the surroundings. This is not a bug in Gentoo or X, more so in aterm, and seems inevitable with the current nature of transparency. Setting WONTFIX.
Thanx team for looking at my bug. I do agree that the transparency is a total hack. However I still think there's a problem with my setup other than that. In particular it's the occasional failure to draw the Fluxbox menu that worries me. I'll turn off all references to transparency and see if it will misbehave. cheers, Nick ps. Even if this is all a waste of time, at least others can now search for "incomplete update", and it might stop them from reporting the same thing.
