terminfo

[Ian Lepore]

On Fri, 2014-02-21 at 10:35 -0800, John-Mark Gurney wrote:
> Ian Lepore wrote this message on Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 08:46 -0700:
> > On Fri, 2014-02-21 at 13:05 +0100, Ed Schouten wrote:
> > > It's a shame I am so short on time nowadays, but I think it would make
> > > so much sense to just come up with some kind of document that
> > > standardizes the intersection of the features supported by most common
> > > terminal emulators and get it rubber stamped by the maintainers of
> > > various terminal emulators. If it turns out some kind of terminal
> > > emulator does something in a non-standard way, we can just slap this
> > > document in the author's face. That would not only benefit FreeBSD,
> > > but also most of the other flavours of UNIX.
> > > 
> > > $TERM should die.
> > > 
> > 
> > All of that seems to assume that every terminal actually being used in
> > the world today is either xterm or something that emulates it.  Try
> > using vi on a serial console on an embedded ARM board and you'll get a
> > quick frustrating lesson in how not-xterm a serial console is.  I've yet
> > to find a combo of serial comms program and TERM setting that actually
> > works well and lets you edit a file with vi.
> 
> Have you used screen?
> 
> screen /dev/ttyXXX 9600
> 
> It's pretty much the only serial console program I use because I use
> screen, and remebering how to use tip/cu w/ a new random USB serial
> device is anoying...
> 

screen is what I finally settled on as the least-horrible option, but it
barely works for anything except scrolling text and typing command
lines.  Anything fullscreen works a bit and fails a bit in different
ways with different TERM= values.

I've never used cu, forgot it even exists, but several people have
mentioned it, so I'll give it a try.  I tend to shy away from
1980s-vintage tools because they're so... 1980s.  (tip, for example, is
just an abomination).

-- Ian