[ On Friday, August 8, 2003 at 19:33:18 (+0300), Juha K Kallio wrote: ]
> Subject: Installing ncurses/terminfo
>
> How am I supposed to use terminfo after installing the devel/ncurses package?
> I'm not quite familiar with the system, so what exactly happens when I try eg.
> 'TERM=xterm-color'? It just says that it can't find a terminal definition, but
> terminfo certainly has one.

Well since all the curses-using programs in the base OS are using the
native termcap support it doesn't work to just define one global TERM
value in your environment, at least not when you want to use a different
non-native terminal type with the ncurses application(s).

You need to set TERM explicitly just for the ncurses-using applications
if you need/want to use a different terminal type with them than you
would use by default with the rest of your NetBSD session.  For example:

	env TERM=xterm-color zile

(zile is the only ncurses-using application I currently have installed)

You can do this transparently if you write little wrapper shell aliases
or shell functions or shell scripts for all your ncurses applications.

E.g. with /bin/sh or /bin/ksh in your ~/.profile:

	alias zile='TERM=xterm-color /usr/pkg/bin/zile'

(of course that assumes you'll be sitting behind an X11 session with a
colour display and a running a colour-capable xterm to connect to your
shell session when you type "zile" :-)

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

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