Emacs 18.52 & SLC console problem

[Roger Burroughes]

	Having recently installed some SLCs (12Mb, running 4.0.3),
I've had one or two complaints from users that GNU Emacs (18.52) isn't
working properly when used on a bare SLC console (i.e. not using a
windowing system). 

	The problem in question is that white space inserted at the
beginning of a line is not displayed as such - the first character is
merely repeated where the spaces should be (although the spaces are
re-displayed properly when the screen is redrawn). It SEEMS as if this
problem is peculiar to SLCs (other SUNs are OK, although haven't tried
it on SS1s), and then only when using the bare console - works OK with
rlogin, suntools/view, etc. 

	It has been suggested that the problem might be with the
console tty driver (written in Forth??) or that the console termcap
entry might need tweaking. Does anyone know any more about this? Also,
does anyone have anything to say about the comment that SUN didn't
intend the SLC console to be used without running a windowing system
on it? 

	Please reply by email, and I'll summarise if the me-too count
gets high enough :-)


Roger Burroughes,
Centre for Cognitive Science/Human Communication Research Centre