[vox-tech] Xterm and terminal types

[Ken Bloom]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 02:20:31PM -0800, Josh Parsons wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Dec 2004, Rod Roark wrote:
> 
> > > As I recall, vte (the terminal widget used by gnome-terminal) was designed
> > > to read a termcap file and configure itself...
> >
> > Would that be a source tweak?  I can't find any command line...
> 
> OK, here's all I know.  The README for vte says:
> 
> "You could say that VTE is something of a research project of mine, based
> on the simple question:  'if programs can use a termcap file (through
> either libtermcap or curses or ncurses) to determine how to drive a
> terminal, why can't a terminal emulator use a termcap file to determine
> how to behave?'"

My answer:

Termcap may only describe a subset of the capabilities of the
terminal - because the client programs that use termcap may only need
a subset of the terminal features to be fully expressive. However,
some application hardcoded for that particular terminal type might use
more of that terminal's tricks than termcap specifies. So it would
send things that VTE couldn't understand (because they weren't
specified in the termcap).

Hence the question is: is what I said here true or false?


> Some source spelunking finds an API function:
> 
> /**
>  * vte_terminal_set_emulation:
>  * @terminal: a #VteTerminal
>  * @emulation: the name of a terminal description
>  *
>  * Sets what type of terminal the widget attempts to emulate by scanning
>  * for control sequences defined in the system's termcap file.  Unless you
>  * are interested in this feature, always use "xterm".
>  *
>  */
> void
> vte_terminal_set_emulation(VteTerminal *terminal, const char *emulation)
> 
> grepping for "vte_terminal_set_emulation" in gnome-terminal finds nothing,
> so I guess you're right, source tweaks would be needed.  If you don't want
> to modify gnome-terminal, there is also a sample terminal application that
> comes with vte itself, which might be easier to hack on.
> 
> ---
> Josh Parsons
> Philosophy Department
> 1238 Social Sciences and Humanities Bldg.
> University of California
> Davis, CA 95616-8673
> USA
> 
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