[18265] in Athena Bugs
Re: linux 8.4.11: termcap, as used by tcsh, /usr/bin/less, vi, etc.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Tue Sep 12 23:56:07 2000
Message-Id: <200009130356.XAA05980@egyptian-gods.MIT.EDU>
To: "andrew m. boardman" <AMB@MIT.EDU>
Cc: bugs@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 12 Sep 2000 18:30:29 EDT."
<200009122230.SAA43989@karst.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 23:56:00 -0400
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
> How broken! What would people think about a rearrangement of the
> Linux Athena termcap entries?
Yes, it's broken. I think this is probably the fault of XFree or the
X consortium and not Red Hat, but whoever's fault it is, it was a
mistake. When the termcap entry changes in an incompatible way, it
should get a new name.
But I think we'd be asking for trouble trying to fix it. If we change
our machines around, then non-Athena Linux machines won't be
termcap-compatible with Athena Linux machines. And if and when
Solaris and/or IRIX come out with the new incompatible xterm termcap,
we'll have to hack those two. And then we'll be incompatible with
everyone until we go through more pain.
Plus, hacking terminfo database is not a trivial thing as far as I
know.
This bug bites me all the time, and I hate it, but I just don't see a
reasonable way out.
