In xterm-191-1 the saveLines resource (which determines the number of lines that have scrolled off-screen to be saved) is now set to a default of 64. In xterm 179 (FC1) it was set to 2500. 64 is far too low and means users are unable to check all but the very most recent output. Even 'ls -la ~' (for a desktop user) may use up more than that. Advanced users (who are the people most likely to be using xterm) are more likely to require even more. Think compiles, debugging output, even just long sessions etc. Doing fairly standard development work I find that I need at least 1024 lines on a day-to-day basis, and would be happy with that as a default. Workaround for individual users is this in ~/.Xresources: xterm*saveLines: 1024
2500 was a Redhat customization. 64 is the longstanding default (which I have the impression is so low simply to make the process not use extra memory).
I am modifying the app-defaults file for xterm patch #192, do not see a need to modify the compiled-in default value.
Stuart) Our xterm-191 package was built with all Red Hat customizations disabled, just to determine which of our customizations we could dispose of in the future, in order to try to stay closer to upstream sources. For the scrollback lines, I'll wait for xterm 192 to be released and update to that and see if the new defaults Thomas has provided work our well for people. I'll leave this open for now until we make the update to 192, at which point I'll ping others for testing. Thanks for testing out the new build and reporting this to us! Thomas) Thanks for looking into changing the defaults also.
I committed patch #192 last night, so the next time you update your package this should be closed.
Ok, thanks Thomas. I'm updating to 192 right now. Going to leave this bug report open for now though to track this for when I update our resources patch, to ensure I remove our local customization for this.