termcap

[Brian K. White]

On 6/8/2017 1:29 PM, Bill Campbell via Filepro-list wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 07, 2017, Brian K. White via Filepro-list wrote:
>> What terminal are you using?
>>
>> I think gnome-terminal has to be told to use linux emulation mode through a
>> setting, and then further, told not to use F1 and F10 etc for itself.
>
> There are similar function key issues when using xterms from OS X.
>
> ...
>
>> We also change the default character set from utf8 to cp437 by
>> LANG="en_US" in /etc/locale.conf
>> this way when you configure a terminal to suit the filepro termcap for linux,
>> everything else on the system (outside of filepro) also works on that same
>> terminal. May need to reboot for that change to take full effect, because
>> your desktop session which read that file was actually started at system
>> boot, even if you log out and log back in.
>
> I've always hacked the 'p' startup script for FilePro to set the
> LANG, TERM, and TERMCAP environment variables.
>
>> (The *correct* way to handle that LANG problem is *probably* to figure out a
>> special init sequence to add to the filepro termcap that switches the
>> terminal into/out of utf8 mode, or perhaps set LANG as an environment
>> variable in the terminal config and configure sshd_config to allow the client
>> to set LANG, ...all of which is handled completely differently when the
>> "terminal" is actually a local instance of xterm or gnome-terminal. In that
>> case maybe you could do something with the desktop file or make a small shell
>> script that sets it instead of running gnome-terminal directly, or maybe
>> that's something that could be done from within gnome-terminal's profiles
>> support... Or just change the system-wide default like above.)
>
> See above.
>
> Bill
>


I would assume that setting variables in "p" or other filepro startup 
script would make filepro work, but would not make the terminal work 
with other stuff outside of filepro.

Or, unless maybe you have the terminal in utf8 mode, compatible with the 
rest of the system, and in TERMCAP in the fp start script you had a 
whole termcap entry with utf8 versions of all the G* fields, or maybe 
GS/GE codes that switched in & out of utf8? I don't think utf8 breaks 
anything but simply drawing the G* characters.

That also implies the script is hard coded to a particular terminal 
instead of honoring the TERM declared by the client.

By rights, you should be able to connect with a client that says "I am 
linux", and then the termcap entry handles everything from there, with 
no default assumptions mattering. You should be able to connect with an 
Android or IOS client that doesn't allow you to set fancy custom 
settings, so it would set TERM=xterm and be utf8 and you'd have no 
control over that on the client side, the server should be fine with that.

But that's just a teeny bit fancier termcap-fu than I've bothered with 
yet, so my fall-back is changing LANG system-wide, which makes 
everything on the system make the same default assumption that filepro 
(or really, fp/termcap) makes.

-- 
bkw