Re: bin/42836: window(1) display error on most TERMs

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR bin/42836; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: bin/42836: window(1) display error on most TERMs
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:47:15 +0700

     Date:        Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:55:04 +0000 (UTC)
     From:        Christopher Berardi <cberardi%natoufa.com@localhost>
     Message-ID:  <20100217205504.28E8F63C470%www.NetBSD.org@localhost>
 
   |  I'm not using a terminal emulator. I'm using the console.
 
 The console is a terminal emulator.   Assuming you're using one of the
 common ports, it will be an emulation of a (fictional) wsvt25 terminal.
 
 That's approximately a vt220, and should be a superset of a vt100.
 xterm is related, but not quite the same.
 
   | Thus all changes have been made via "export TERM=???"
   | (as I'm using /bin/ksh), where ??? is vt200, vt100, xterm, etc.
 
 That's the right way  to change TERM - but remember the purpose of
 TERM is to tell the programs you are running what kind of terminal
 that you have, so they generate the correct control sequences.  You
 cannot alter your terminal type by changing TERM (all that's possible
 is to only use a subset of what the real terminal, or emulator, has
 available).
 
 The terminal emulator that controls the console has no idea what you
 have set TERM to.
 
 You can try setting TERM to vt100 before you start window - that should
 probably work OK.   After window has started you should leave TERM alone.
 
 If your objective here is to get to display your national character set,
 then ask on netbsd-help how to do that on the console, there are plenty
 of people who know what needs to be done to make that work (I am not one
 of them).  Once you have it working on the bare console, you can look and
 see if it works in window (if it does, it will work without changes to
 TERM from what works in the bare console).   It is possible that window
 is a 7 bit only program (it is very old - but I have no idea) and that you
 might need to try screen from pkgsrc, or something.
 
 If that isn't what you're wanting to do, then you should tell us the
 objective, and someone can probably help you achieve it.
 
 But this PR I think should close, I don't think what you have described
 is a problem with window ... which isn't to say that there might not be
 some other limitation of bug in that.
 
 kre