Confusion about get_text(1, 1, -1, -1)

[js-everts]

Its not clear to me from the documentation what this is supposed to do. Am I right in thinking if you do get_text(a, b, -1, -1), then it supposed to return the contents of the terminal from (a, b) to (a+rows, b+cols) where rows and cols is the size of the terminal.

If so, lets say the terminal size is 80x20 with sufficient content in the scrollback buffer. If we do something like get_text(100, 0, -1, -1), I think its supposed to be interpreted as get_text(100, 0, 180, 20). But tym will return nothing because it will interpret this as get_text(100, 0, 80, 20) which is an invalid range. Is this by design or is this a bug?

Would it make sense to change get_text(0, 0, -1, -1) to return the entire scrollback buffer?. I know we can already do this by combining get_cursor_position().

Also would it make sense to add a new builtin get_text_visible() to fetch the currently visible area of terminal. See vte_terminal_get_text().

[endaaman]

get_text() API was added tentatively, I've been thinking it should be more refined. Please let me add to "My TODOs" a task to add these screen text controling APIs.