From b2606c0421f855a59108bbe22a8f83c5e4ac3ace Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nicholas Marriott Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2009 16:29:50 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Correct usage of termcap. --- FAQ | 32 +++++++++++++++++--------------- 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-) diff --git a/FAQ b/FAQ index 0b7f91af..9cf0eebc 100644 --- a/FAQ +++ b/FAQ @@ -42,16 +42,17 @@ include as much of the following information as possible: Please send feature requests by email to nicm@users.sourceforge.net. -* Why do you use the screen termcap inside tmux? It sucks. +* Why do you use the screen terminal description inside tmux? It sucks. -It is already widely available. It is planned to change to something else -such as xterm-color at some point, if possible. +It is already widely available. It is planned to change to something else such +as xterm-xfree86 at some point, if possible. * I don't see any colour in my terminal! Help! -On some platforms, common termcaps such as xterm do not include colour. screen -ignores this, tmux does not. If the terminal emulator in use supports colour, -use a termcap which correctly lists this, such as xterm-color. +On some platforms, common terminal descriptions such as xterm do not include +colour. screen ignores this, tmux does not. If the terminal emulator in use +supports colour, use a value for TERM which correctly lists this, such as +xterm-color. * tmux freezes my terminal when I attach to a session. I even have to kill -9 the shell it was started from to recover! @@ -96,9 +97,9 @@ flag may be specified when creating or attaching a client to a tmux session: * How do I use a 256 colour terminal? -tmux will attempt to detect a 256 colour terminal both by looking at the Co -termcap entry and, as this is broken for some terminals such as xterm-256color, -by looking for the string "256col" in the termcap name. +tmux will attempt to detect a 256 colour terminal both by looking at the colors +terminfo entry and by looking for the string "256col" in the TERM environment +variable. If both these methods fail, the -2 flag may be passed to tmux when attaching to a session to indicate the terminal supports 256 colours. @@ -106,8 +107,9 @@ to a session to indicate the terminal supports 256 colours. * vim or $otherprogram doesn't display 256 colours. What's up? Some programs attempt to detect the number of colours a terminal is capable of -by checking the Co termcap entry. However, this is not reliable, and in any -case is missing from the "screen" termcap used inside tmux. +by checking the colors terminfo or Co termcap entry. However, this is not +reliable, and in any case is missing from the "screen" terminal description +used inside tmux. There are three options to allow programs to recognise they are running on a 256-colour terminal inside tmux: @@ -115,9 +117,9 @@ a 256-colour terminal inside tmux: - Manually force the application to use 256 colours always or if TERM is set to screen. For vim, you can do this by overriding the t_Co option, see http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/256_colors_in_vim. -- If the platform includes it, using the "screen-256color" termcap (set - TERM=screen-256color). "infocmp screen-256color" can be used to check if this - is supported. It is possible to set this globally inside tmux using the +- If the platform includes it, using the "screen-256color" terminal description + (set TERM=screen-256color). "infocmp screen-256color" can be used to check if + this is supported. It is possible to set this globally inside tmux using the default-terminal session option, or it may be done in a shell startup script by checking if TERM is screen and exporting TERM=screen-256color instead. - Creating a custom terminfo file that includes colors#256 in ~/.terminfo and using @@ -202,4 +204,4 @@ on the Window -> Translation configuration page. For example, change UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 or CP437. It may also be necessary to adjust the way PuTTY treats line drawing characters in the lower part of the same configuration page. -$Id: FAQ,v 1.25 2009-08-05 14:56:58 nicm Exp $ +$Id: FAQ,v 1.26 2009-08-05 16:29:50 nicm Exp $