On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 03:00:07PM +0000, Ian Abbott wrote: > On 25/02/2026 14:37, Dr. Werner Fink wrote: > > On 2026/02/25 14:25:03 +0000, Ian Abbott wrote: > > > On 25/02/2026 12:58, Dr. Werner Fink wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > > I've a bug report about dialog not supporting the Alt key. Means > > > > e.g. that > > > > > > > > dialog --yesno Hallo 6 30 > > > > > > > > return for both Alt-y and Alt-n or Alt-Y and Alt-N the value 255. > > > > This is nowadays somehow uncommon[1]. It would very helpful > > > > to be able to navigate not only with cursor or tab keys but > > > > also with the ALt and the coloured characters of the buttons. > > > > > > > > > > > > Werner > > > > > > > > [1] https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1257107 > > > > > > It is probably difficult to do anything different for those terminal > > > emulators that interpret the Alt/Meta modifier as "insert an ASCII ESC > > > character before the typed character". > > > > On bash prompt I do a `cat -A` shows for Alt-x, Alt-y, and Alt-n > > > > ^[x^[y^[n > > > > but bindkey only accepts single characters as it seems not to > > identify events but characters only (curses_key). Also the > > resulting action can not bind to a defined button or its label > > (dialog_key). > > Perhaps one option is to implement an `--ignore-esc` option to ignore the > ESC key. For portability in scripts, I thought that could be combined with > the `--ignore` option to ignore unsupported options on older versions of > dialog, but it seems that doesn't really work:
That would interfere with dialog's use of curses for decoding special keys. There are programs which do it themselves, but the ones that I know about originated in hard-coded stuff which was made to use termcap, or -- as in vi-like editors -- written with the original one in mind. > dialog --ignore --ignore-esc --yesno Hallo 6 30 > > Unknown option --ignore-esc. > Use --help to list options. > > -- > -=( Ian Abbott <[email protected]> || MEV Ltd. is a company )=- > -=( registered in England & Wales. Regd. number: 02862268. )=- > -=( Regd. addr.: S11 & 12 Building 67, Europa Business Park, )=- > -=( Bird Hall Lane, STOCKPORT, SK3 0XA, UK. || www.mev.co.uk )=- > > -- Thomas E. Dickey <[email protected]> https://invisible-island.net
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