Focus and unfocus window shows strange status message

[lemieuxl]

Hello all!

I need help with a strange message in the status bar of visidata which has been messing with my head for a while now.

When I start visidata (v3.0.1, python 3.12 / 3.11, fedora 39), I get the following message in the status bar: no command for "kxOUShift+T". Visidata works as expected, but I cannot see the results of a one-time aggregator since only this message appears. It's been like this for a while now.

I tried removing my configuration file (~/.visidatarc), without any effects.

I don't think it's a bug, since visidata works as expected. I was wondering if any of you had this issue in the past.

Thanks!

[anjakefala]

@lemieuxl Could you tell us your terminal, $TERM, and Operating System?

[lemieuxl]

@anjakefala
The message appears on gnome-console (45.0), gnome-terminal (3.50.1) and terminator (2.1.3). They all use xterm-256color. I'm using Fedora 39 (but the message was present on Fedora 38).

I also noticed that the message changes over time (when the window is in focus or not). When visidata first launches (and the window is in focus), I see kxIShift+N. When the terminal is out of focus (I click on a different window), I see kxOUShift+T. Finally, when I go back to the terminal, I see kxIShift+N.

Could visidata be registering something from wayland? The message appears at the same place where LeftBtnUp, scrollUp, etc. do appear.

[midichef]

Visidata is reacting to terminal events for change of focus.

You can try to turn off the focus in/out events at the terminal level. Try running printf "\e[?1004l" in your terminal before you run visidata.

For my system, gnome-terminal in Ubuntu, I can confirm that printf "\e[?1004h" turns on focus events that Visidata reacts to, and printf "\e[?1004l" turns them off. But instead of kxIN and kxOUT, I see ^[[I and ^[[O.

If you instead want to try to address the problem inside visidata, you can try this in .visidatarc as a quick solution:

Sheet.addCommand('kxIN', '', '', 'do nothing for focus-in event')
Sheet.addCommand('kxOUT', '', '', 'do nothing for focus-out events')

[saulpw]

@lemieuxl Are you saying that running printf "\e[?1004l" in gnome-terminal before running vd doesn't make the issue go away for you? If so, I have no idea what's going on in your terminal or what could be done about it. Please confirm.

[lemieuxl]

I confirm that running printf before vd has no effect (I still see the message).

printf "\e[?1004l" ; vd dummy.csv

[midichef]

@lemieuxl
I reproduced this problem on a Fedora 39 machine. For now, try changing your shell's $TERM environment variable to something other than xterm-256color. Some choices that worked for me are:
TERM=gnome-256color vd and
TERM=tmux-256color vd
If those two have problems, you can try others listed when you run toe -a.

[midichef]

@saulpw
This is all new to me, I didn't know about these focus events till now!

I can reproduce the problem, in an ssh session to a Fedora machine from gnome-terminal on Ubuntu. What I see is:

The kxIN event is sent to visidata when the terminal gets a genuine focus-in event, and the kxOUT for focus-out events. But oddly, the kxIN is also seen when visidata starts. (lemieuxl saw kxOUT-related messages, but I see messages for kxIN). And kxIN is seen after any line of input is read (for example, after / reads a regex or z+ reads an aggregator). I'm guessing that something visidata does with curses is causing this event to be generated.

Sheet.addCommand('kxIShift+N' was able to add a command for the event, but Sheet.addCommand('kxIN' was not able to. Then, as you said, creating a command did not stop the problem of the no-op command overwriting the output that lemiuxl wanted to see.

printf "\e[?1004l" did nothing to stop these events in visidata. I believe that the 1004 mode is already off before visidata runs, because printf "\e[?1004h" caused new behavior in the shell (not in visidata). It made the terminal ring a bell when focus went in/out of the window, and printf "\e[?1004l" then restored the default shell behavior, of no bell.

A thread from a few months ago on the vim repo is the best description I can find so far for some of the recent changes around focus events and xterm. And there's some recent advice for the developer of nano on how to handle the focus events.

[lemieuxl]

@midichef
Changing $TERM to gnome-256color or tmux-256color fixes the issue. Now that I'm thinking about it, I did notice the status bar was fine when using tmux, but I don't use it that often locally (on my F39 machine).