Re: [PATCH] Turn off curses meta() mode before exiting.

"Kevin J. McCarthy" <[email protected]> Wed, 24 Jun 2026 06:54:24 +0800

Newsgroups	gmane.mail.mutt.devel
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Tue, Jun 23, 2026 at 05:08:28PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
>On 2026-06-22 13:30:06 +0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote:
>> Ncurses does not change the mode back, thus leaving some terminals,
>> such as foot, in a different state than when they started.
>> ---
>>
>> This is a patch against stable branch.
>>
>> See gitlab ticket: https://gitlab.com/muttmua/mutt/-/work_items/528
>> and also the foot ticket referenced there at:
>> https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot/issues/2393
>>
>> I also emailed Thomas Dickey to check with him about this.  He
>> confirmed that meta() is not reset.  It's apparently a rarely set
>> mode, and so he also advised to turn it back off before exiting.
>
>As I've said in the ticket, I'm wondering why Mutt changes the setting
>in the first place. The terminal settings should be a user decision.

I have no idea.  It's in the first commit to git, so there are no 
comments.

The keybindings in functions.h all have Esc-prefixes.

There is a mutt option, $meta_key, default unset, but in the foot 
terminal, even setting this option doesn't make Alt-f/b work properly in 
the mutt line editor or elsewhere.  I have to press Esc-f.  I'll have to 
debug why.

I will be glad to remove the ncurses call to meta() if that makes sense 
instead.  Removing this call makes foot behavior properly in the mutt 
line editor and elsewhere.

However, I worry about other terminal's behavior.  Perhaps we'd have to 
announce that 8-bit mode is now under the users's control.  I would need 
help with how to phrase this properly.

-- 
Kevin J. McCarthy
GPG Fingerprint: 8975 A9B3 3AA3 7910 385C  5308 ADEF 7684 8031 6BDA

signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 833 B)