Re: Making the keyboard work

[Alan Barrett <apb%cequrux.com@localhost>]

On Fri, 20 Feb 2009, Roy Marples wrote:
> Luckily this is easily fixable. We should stop trying to make wscons
> pretend it's a vt220 by changing /etc/ttys. The correct entry is of
> course wsvt25. Changing it also has the added benefit of adding colour
> to the console.

There are two obvious approaches:

1) (a) Leave the behaviour of wscons unchanged, (b) ensure that the
   master termcap/terminfo entries for wsvt25 describes the behaviour
   accurately, (c) ensure that all usable remote systems have the
   correct termcap/terminfo definitions, and (d) use TERM=wsvt25
   everywhere.

2) (a) Change the behaviour of wscons to match a well-known terminal
   type, such as xterm-color, (b) assume that suitable termcap/terminfo
   entries are already suitably widespread, and (d) use TERM=xterm-color
   (or other suitable value) everywhere.

Option 1 requires no kernel changes, but many changes to third party
systems.

Option 2 requires kernel changes, but no changes to external systems.

I recommend option 2: change wscons to behave like xterm-color (or some
other suitable well-known terminal type).  However, I won't be doing the
work.

--apb (Alan Barrett)