OT: linux vs vt100 termcap problems + screen - help!

[Bob Rasmussen]

A couple initial things:

1) Do you know that 'screen' is color-compatible?

2) Does either or both Linux box(es) have LANG set with a "UTF-8" suffix?

Background:

3) VT220 doesn't do color. That's ONE of the main differences between 
VT220 and Linux.

Other tests:

4) What if you remove 'screen' from the pipeline?

5) What if you SSH to the SAME box?

On Tue, 7 Dec 2010, Fairlight wrote:

> Okay, this is driving me NUTS!  Someone, please, for the love of all that's
> good and holy, save my sanity.
> 
> I have screen(1) in play.  It's 8-bit clean, and will do UTF-8.
> 
> My setup:
> 
> PuTTY or Anzio (doesn't matter which) ->
> OpenSuSE 11.1 TERM=linux ->
> screen ->
> ssh->
> any system TERM=linux ->
> mutt, yast, any ncurses-based program
> 
> Okay...On the box to which I ssh from inside screen, if I have TERM=linux,
> then colours draw incompletely, and some graphics characters are wrong
> (notably the arrows in thread mode in mutt.  The screens draw incompletely.
> Notably, what I mean by this is that colour is entirely absent wherever
> there's not a character drawn (even a space will force colour painting).
> 
> If I change that box to which I ssh to read TERM=vt100, vt220,
> vt320...anything in the vtxxx series, I lose colour, but at least the
> screen draws solidly in yast, and the arrows are correctly drawn in mutt.
> 
> Problem:  I want my termcap to be linux on the target ssh'd box at all
> times, so that I can use -one- terminal setting across multiple emulators
> and locations.
> 
> Please tell me what the key difference between the vtxxx and linux entries
> actually is that's causing this bloody nightmare that I've wasted hours on?
> The linux entry is -supposed- to be an extended vt220.  It doesn't act like
> it.  And it's driving me mad.  I literally am using the same encodings, the
> same font...and it's soley the termcap setting that's causing my headaches.
> 
> Problem 2:  I also don't want to have to modify the core /etc/termcap file
> for the linux entry.  I need a way to set TERM=linux, yet fix the actual
> problem that accounts for the difference.  I thought there was a way around
> that...memory is hazy, but I think you can shove an entire termcap entry
> into $TERMCAP and that does it.  So I could copy the core entry and just
> modify what needs changing and stuff it in the environment.  But I need to
> know what the critical difference is that's causing these mis-draws.
> 
> Retaining colour would be ideal, but if I absolutely have to suffer
> monochrome, so be it--grudgingly.
> 
> I know we have some termcap gods here...please, save what's left of my
> sanity.
> 
> mark->
> -- 
> Audio panton, cogito singularis.
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Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
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