Terminal trouble
cothrige
unicode in my terminals (my current preference mrxvt does not support
it) rxvt-unicode was suggested as a possible alternative. However,
now I am dealing with an even more aggravating situation, and that is
the alternate screen where the entire screen is cleared after closing
things like man or less. I cannot put into words how much I hate this
"feature" and would love to find a way to turn it off. I have googled
and found nothing which worked. I would assume that other Debian
users are faced with this, since it seems the default in all the
terminals, and I would very much appreciate any ideas of how others
get it to stop.
Many thanks in advance,
Patrick
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-us...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listm...@lists.debian.org
Dmitri Minaev
> In another thread in which I was seeking a better way to handle
> unicode in my terminals (my current preference mrxvt does not support
> it) rxvt-unicode was suggested as a possible alternative.
xterm from Sarge (xterm-4.3.0.dfsg.1-14sarge1) with $TERM set to
'xterm' and started under a UTF-8 locale does handle Unicode texts
more or less correctly and has no problems with screen redraw.
--
With best regards,
Dmitri Minaev
James Richardson
> In another thread in which I was seeking a better way to handle
> unicode in my terminals (my current preference mrxvt does not support
> it) rxvt-unicode was suggested as a possible alternative. However,
> now I am dealing with an even more aggravating situation, and that is
> the alternate screen where the entire screen is cleared after closing
> things like man or less. I cannot put into words how much I hate this
> "feature" and would love to find a way to turn it off. I have googled
> and found nothing which worked. I would assume that other Debian
> users are faced with this, since it seems the default in all the
> terminals, and I would very much appreciate any ideas of how others
> get it to stop.
>
resource to true (e.g. add a line like XTerm*titeInhibit: True to your
.Xresources file), not sure it it works with rxvt. You may have to mess
with the terminfo database and remove the functionality of smcup and
rmcup, which of course correspond to the ti and te entries of termcap.
--
James Richardson
http://jretelcom.com
http://jamesrichardson.org
cothrige
> >
> I am not sure about rxvt, but with xterm you can set the titeInhibit
> resource to true (e.g. add a line like XTerm*titeInhibit: True to your
> .Xresources file), not sure it it works with rxvt. You may have to mess
> with the terminfo database and remove the functionality of smcup and
> rmcup, which of course correspond to the ti and te entries of termcap.
>
I do have the titeInhibit resource set to true, and it does help
xterm, though I don't really like xterm. Can't say why for certain,
though it does seem sort of slow and clunky to me. In the past, I
would also set Rxvt.termName to xterm and perhaps this helped to fix
the situation with rxvt, because for a long time I did not have this
problem. However, it hasn't had any impact this time and all my
terminals except xterm are carrying on in this way.
How does one go about changing the terminfo database? I have never
messed with that before. The two questions which really bug me right
now are why, in such a configurable and choices based system as Linux,
would this kind of "feature" be hardwired in and made virtually
unchangeable? And secondly, are there really people out there who
prefer this behaviour? It would easily make my top five list of
irritating features.
James Richardson
> * James Richardson (ja...@hyperbolictech.com) wrote:
> > >
> > I am not sure about rxvt, but with xterm you can set the titeInhibit
> > resource to true (e.g. add a line like XTerm*titeInhibit: True to your
> > .Xresources file), not sure it it works with rxvt. You may have to mess
> > with the terminfo database and remove the functionality of smcup and
> > rmcup, which of course correspond to the ti and te entries of termcap.
> >
>
> I do have the titeInhibit resource set to true, and it does help
> xterm, though I don't really like xterm. Can't say why for certain,
> though it does seem sort of slow and clunky to me. In the past, I
> would also set Rxvt.termName to xterm and perhaps this helped to fix
> the situation with rxvt, because for a long time I did not have this
> problem. However, it hasn't had any impact this time and all my
> terminals except xterm are carrying on in this way.
>
> How does one go about changing the terminfo database? I have never
> messed with that before. The two questions which really bug me right
> now are why, in such a configurable and choices based system as Linux,
> would this kind of "feature" be hardwired in and made virtually
> unchangeable? And secondly, are there really people out there who
> prefer this behaviour? It would easily make my top five list of
> irritating features.
>
people who prefer the behavior, although presumable the guy who made it
the default liked it. ;)
The easiest way to change the terminfo database is to decompile the
entry for your terminal, take out the the entries for rmcup and smcup,
and then recompile the entry.
1. How do I tell which termcap entry I am using?
The TERM environment variable contains the value. (echo $TERM). As I use
xterm, my entry is xterm.
2. Decompile the apropriate entry.
$infocmp xterm > /tmp/xterm
3. edit /tmp/xterm and remove the entry for rmcup and smcup.
4. recompile the new file. tic /tmp/xterm.
This will place a file in a directory .terminfo in your home directory.
5. You should now be able to start rxvt without the alternate screen.
6. Where to go next. If you want to make this your system default, you
need to copy the file (as root) into /usr/share/terminfo/... (for xterm
that would be /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm). If you don't want to make it
the system default, but available to users, just copy it somewhere into
/usr/share/terminfo... (like /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-special) and
have TERM set appropriately in .bashrc.
--
James Richardson
cothrige
> >
> I don't know why it is the default, and I don't really know a lot of
> people who prefer the behavior, although presumable the guy who made it
> the default liked it. ;)
I can live with it even being default, though I really cannot imagine
it being a popular setting, but it surely should be configurable.
It would be like having comic sans the built-in font and making it so
that anyone who wanted something else would have to actually hack into
the source code. With everything which can be configured via
Xdefaults why this behaviour cannot be modified directly in that way,
excepting the sensibility of xterm of course, is beyond me.
> The easiest way to change the terminfo database is to decompile the
> entry for your terminal, take out the the entries for rmcup and smcup,
> and then recompile the entry.
>
[snip]
Yes, worked perfectly! I cannot thank you enough. Now I can use the
terminal of my choice without having to deal with annoying screen
clearing.
Thanks again,