> Which as far as I can tell is then completely ignored by xterm, so you still
> end up needing to use said DeleteIsDEL option.. (Happy to be told otherwise!)

This is indeed true.  Thanks.  Rant coming up :

However, if you don't have the DeleteIsDEL option and the termcap in sync,
applications can get confused if they try and work out which key you've
pressed.  Unfortunately, there are so many combinations of keyboards and
settings, that it doesn't seem possible to cover them with a single entry,
but I think the current entry is the best compromise (at least doesn't
violate the `principle of least suprise').

Other terminal types have multiple entries, e.g 

  vt100, vt100nam, vt100-w, vt100-w-nam, vt100-nav, vt100-nav-w, vt100-s,
  vt100-s-bot

depending on how they are set up.  I think it would be a bit of a pain to
have to set the terminal type to xterm-r6, xterm-xf86-v40, xterm-xf86-v40-did
(DeleteIsDEL), or whatever, so that you have the right entries for your
vendors' brand of xterm.  And, of course, remember to change it to plain old
'xterm' when you connect to a remote (Solaris/Ultrix/whatever) box that
doesn't have these entries.

Argh!  Rant over.

J

-- 
                    My other computer also runs NetBSD
                          http://www.netbsd.org/