Local echo

[evacchi]

would it be possible to enable local echo on the local terminal? great app, thank you!

[onyxbits]

Am Freitag, den 26.07.2013, 13:14 -0700 schrieb Edoardo Vacchi:

would it be possible to enable local echo on the local terminal? great app, thank you!

Hi, local echo was one of the first things I tried to implement, but I quickly realized that the attempt was futile for a number of reasons:

• You would expect lines to break similarly on your phone and your Deskop. This however is next to impossible due to telnet clients typically (but not always) being fixed to 80 chars per row whereas editareas on android can have pretty much every linewidth they want. Negotiating a common grounds here and enforcing that would be a total nightmare
• Besides line breakes, you also have to take semantics into account, e.g. surpressing a local echo in case of a password field.
• The thing thats next to impossible to archive is spellchecking.
• What do you do when you are done with one editarea? Let's say you are doing data entry in a contacts app and you don't have all the details. Skipping fields or any other form of navigation requires you to use the screen of your phone/tablet anyways.

All in all I came to the conclusion that having a local echo would not only be extremly complicated to do, but also less convinient because you can't get it perfect. In terms of usability, a local echo would likely do more harm than good. However, if you truly need it: Telnet clients should have a local echo option build in.

[evacchi]

well thanks for your reply, and keep up the good work.

[landroni]

I also felt that a local (on-screen display) echo would be useful, to see what's being typed. But if there are good reasons to avoid doing so....

[evacchi]

on BSD telnet (the one in OS X) if you type ctrl+] and type mode line you can enter line mode and see what you type line by line, up unti you hit enter

[landroni]

I tried this trick on the Linux client, and it sort of works. I can send text in batches to the phone via RK. But I can't modify existing text on the phone (e.g. backspace won't do anything).

[evacchi]

yes, it will only work line-wise

[landroni]

Yeah, it probably makes sense, too... Thanks for the tip. Maybe we can close this issue, as it's something that likely needs to be fixed in telnet clients, instead of RK...

BTW, how do you exit mode line?

[onyxbits]

Am Sonntag, den 26.10.2014, 11:40 -0700 schrieb landroni:

I also felt that a local (on-screen display) echo would be useful, to see what's being typed. But if there are good reasons to avoid doing so....

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

I quickly gave up on that:

• Personally, I found it rather confusing to see my typings on two screens.
• telnet uses a fixed x*y character screen, while Android textboxes are highly dynamic. There is no possible way in which to get linebreaks to work properly.

If you really want localecho anyways -> most telnet clients offer an option to handle that themselves.

[evacchi]

@landroni to leave line mode you just enter again the command mode with Ctrl+] and type mode character; and of course you can always use Ctrl+D to immediately quit from the client

[landroni]

Great, thanks.