[Grml] Some features may be dropped from GNU Screen in the future (including braille support)

[Mario Lang]

Samuel Thibault <samuel.thibault at gnu.org> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I'd like to emphasize that the braille feature which is discussed about
> here is *not* general braille access through brltty.
>
> What is being discussed is the tiny braille support embedded in the
> screen package, which only supports a few TeleSensory and TSI hardware
> in a quite basic way, and which has not been developped or maintained
> for years.  There is little wonder screen maintainers would rather
> remove that part of the code: it is unmaintained, and brltty can already
> access screen content another way, and is developped, maintained etc.

I agree.  I have found native screen support for braille displays a few
years ago basically by accident during a code browse.  While it might
historically be interesting that the GNU screen package directly
support(s|ed) braille displays, I don't think many (if any) people
actually use that.  At least on Linux, BRLTTY is superior regarding its
functionality and driver support, and everyone knows that.  I am not
sure about other operating system kernels, but even if we considered
*BSDs whigh might be interested in such a feature natively provided by
GNU screen, there is virtually no support for current hardware models
in GNU screen.  So dropping that part of the code seems like a sensible
thing to do.  The alternative would be to improve it *a lot*.


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