Re: I'm confused about TERMCAP

[Michael Parson]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 01:15:44AM -0500, Richard Bronosky wrote:
> So, I take it this is a common problem?  Where can I find good
> information about TERMCAP?  There's lots of it out there... too much
> actually.  I'm looking for the page with all the right info and none
> of the extra stuff.

The basic problem is that screen is using it's own terminal entries.
The 'right' thing to do is to install them, either system-wide (if you
have root) or in your personal .termcap if you don't.

Or, you override the TERM by either specifying the term-type you prefer
on the command-line (which I do, with the alias) or detecting it in the
shell and overriding the variable, like others are suggesting, but I'd
probably do something more like:

if [ "$TERM" = "screen" ]; then
        export TERM=xterm
fi

rather than unsetting it completely.

I had to do this for one term program I used to use that would set the
TERM to VT220 instead of vt220 (note the caps).  I couldn't change it in
the program, so I changed it in the shell.

For info on fixing the termcap (or more probably terminfo) stuff, read
the man pages for termcap(5) and/or terminfo(5) (termcap is the old/BSD
way, terminfo is the new/SysV way), mostly depends on which lib your
program was linked against.

-- 
Michael Parson
address@hidden