XSkat-IRC and telnet
====================

Some versions of telnet have a bug, that prevents them from
reading input from a pipe correctly.
Arbitrary characters are mapped to control characters (ex: 'd' -> 'Ctrl-C').
This is because the call tcgetattr used to determine
the terminal control characters
 - fails if stdin isn't a tty (which is OK)
 - modifies its return parameter anyway (which wasn't expected)

If you have problems using the IRC feature of XSkat,
you can patch telnet or try the workaround below.


Patch for the BSD-based Linux-telnet
====================================

--- telnet.98.02.16.NE/telnet/sys_bsd.c~ Mon Feb 16 03:17:37 1998
+++ telnet.98.02.16.NE/telnet/sys_bsd.c  Fri May 28 21:43:51 1999
@@ -248,9 +248,7 @@
     nttyb = ottyb;
 
 #else	/* USE_TERMIO */
-    tcgetattr(0, &old_tc);
-
-    new_tc = old_tc;
+    if (!tcgetattr(0, &old_tc)) new_tc = old_tc;
 
 #ifndef	VDISCARD
     termFlushChar = CONTROL('O');


Workaround
==========

If your telnet reads ~/.telnetrc, put something like this into that file:

irc.fu-berlin.de
 display
 set echo ^E
 set escape ^]
 set rlogin off
 set flushoutput ^O
 set interrupt ^C
 set quit ^\\
 set eof ^D
 set erase ^?
 set kill ^U
 set lnext ^V
 set susp ^Z
 set reprint ^R
 set worderase ^W
 set start ^Q
 set stop ^S
 set forw1 off
 set forw2 off
 set ayt ^T

Leading blanks are important!
Change the irc server line appropriately.
The display command may be omitted.
It just shows, whether telnet has a problem.

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