Re: MinGW win32 console with TERM set to xterm

[Thomas Dickey]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2014 at 08:47:09AM -0700, Mike Gran wrote:
> Hi-
> 
> I was trying out the MinGW ncurses snapshot from a
> a couple of weeks ago, trying to get the Guile binding
> of ncurses to run on MinGW.
> 
> The Guile binding's test suite sets TERM=xterm, so
> that the results are consistent regardless of the terminal
> on which the test suite is running.  So I noticed that
> for #w32con, some ncurses functions ignore the TERM
> variable and give the #w32con value instead.
> 
> For example, with TERM=xterm, the procedures use_default_colors,
> assume_default_colors and the term_attrs have different values
> on MinGW vs other systems.

hmm - there are several aspects to this that I can see:

a) with #w32con, ncurses is not using escape sequences.
   So there are large chunks that won't be applicable.

b) It could have been implemented as an embedded terminal emulator,
   but much less efficient (admittedly more consistent).

c) I can see that it would be nice to have term_attrs give a useful value.
   However - I don't see where that would be used, except for preparing
   calls to vidputs, etc.
 
MinGW doesn't have any terminal control calls, and works with windows console.
Msys2 works with mintty - and could be made to work in the windows console.

> (But in the real world, no one would try to use TERM=xterm
> on MinGW after they've compiled in TERM_DRIVER, so I can't
> say if it is worth modifying.)

Some people will set TERM=xterm "just because".

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

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