| 1 | .\"***************************************************************************
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| 2 | .\" Copyright (c) 1998-2002,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
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| 3 | .\" *
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| 4 | .\" Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a *
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| 5 | .\" copy of this software and associated documentation files (the *
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| 6 | .\" "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including *
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| 7 | .\" without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, *
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| 8 | .\" distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell *
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| 9 | .\" copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is *
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| 10 | .\" furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: *
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| 11 | .\" *
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| 12 | .\" The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included *
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| 13 | .\" in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. *
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| 14 | .\" *
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| 15 | .\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS *
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| 16 | .\" OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF *
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| 17 | .\" MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. *
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| 18 | .\" IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, *
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| 19 | .\" DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR *
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| 20 | .\" OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR *
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| 21 | .\" THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. *
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| 22 | .\" *
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| 23 | .\" Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright *
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| 24 | .\" holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the *
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| 25 | .\" sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written *
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| 26 | .\" authorization. *
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| 27 | .\"***************************************************************************
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| 28 | .\"
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| 29 | .\" $Id: term.7,v 1.14 2003/05/10 20:33:49 jmc Exp $
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| 30 | .TH TERM 7
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| 31 | .ds n 5
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| 32 | .ds d @TERMINFO@
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| 33 | .SH NAME
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| 34 | term \- conventions for naming terminal types
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| 35 | .SH DESCRIPTION
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| 36 | .PP
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| 37 | The environment variable \fBTERM\fR should normally contain the type name of
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| 38 | the terminal, console or display-device type you are using. This information
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| 39 | is critical for all screen-oriented programs, including your editor and mailer.
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| 40 | .PP
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| 41 | A default \fBTERM\fR value will be set on a per-line basis by either
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| 42 | \fB/etc/inittab\fR (Linux and System-V-like UNIXes) or \fB/etc/ttys\fR (BSD
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| 43 | UNIXes). This will nearly always suffice for workstation and microcomputer
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| 44 | consoles.
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| 45 | .PP
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| 46 | If you use a dialup line, the type of device attached to it may vary. Older
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| 47 | UNIX systems pre-set a very dumb terminal type like `dumb' or `dialup' on
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| 48 | dialup lines. Newer ones may pre-set `vt100', reflecting the prevalence of DEC
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| 49 | VT100-compatible terminals and personal-computer emulators.
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| 50 | .PP
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| 51 | Modern telnets pass your \fBTERM\fR environment variable from the local side to
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| 52 | the remote one. There can be problems if the remote terminfo or termcap entry
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| 53 | for your type is not compatible with yours, but this situation is rare and
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| 54 | can almost always be avoided by explicitly exporting `vt100' (assuming you
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| 55 | are in fact using a VT100-superset console, terminal, or terminal emulator.)
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| 56 | .PP
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| 57 | In any case, you are free to override the system \fBTERM\fR setting to your
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| 58 | taste in your shell profile. The \fBtset\fP(1) utility may be of assistance;
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| 59 | you can give it a set of rules for deducing or requesting a terminal type based
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| 60 | on the tty device and baud rate.
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| 61 | .PP
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| 62 | Setting your own \fBTERM\fR value may also be useful if you have created a
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| 63 | custom entry incorporating options (such as visual bell or reverse-video)
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| 64 | which you wish to override the system default type for your line.
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| 65 | .PP
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| 66 | Terminal type descriptions are stored as files of capability data underneath
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| 67 | \*d. To browse a list of all terminal names recognized by the system, do
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| 68 |
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| 69 | toe | more
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| 70 |
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| 71 | from your shell. These capability files are in a binary format optimized for
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| 72 | retrieval speed (unlike the old text-based \fBtermcap\fR format they replace);
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| 73 | to examine an entry, you must use the \fBinfocmp\fR(1) command. Invoke it as
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| 74 | follows:
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| 75 |
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| 76 | infocmp \fIentry-name\fR
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| 77 |
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| 78 | where \fIentry-name\fR is the name of the type you wish to examine (and the
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| 79 | name of its capability file the subdirectory of \*d named for its first
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| 80 | letter). This command dumps a capability file in the text format described by
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| 81 | \fBterminfo\fR(\*n).
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| 82 | .PP
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| 83 | The first line of a \fBterminfo\fR(\*n) description gives the names by which
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| 84 | terminfo knows a terminal, separated by `|' (pipe-bar) characters with the last
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| 85 | name field terminated by a comma. The first name field is the type's
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| 86 | \fIprimary name\fR, and is the one to use when setting \fBTERM\fR. The last
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| 87 | name field (if distinct from the first) is actually a description of the
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| 88 | terminal type (it may contain blanks; the others must be single words). Name
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| 89 | fields between the first and last (if present) are aliases for the terminal,
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| 90 | usually historical names retained for compatibility.
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| 91 | .PP
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| 92 | There are some conventions for how to choose terminal primary names that help
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| 93 | keep them informative and unique. Here is a step-by-step guide to naming
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| 94 | terminals that also explains how to parse them:
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| 95 | .PP
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| 96 | First, choose a root name. The root will consist of a lower-case letter
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| 97 | followed by up to seven lower-case letters or digits. You need to avoid using
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| 98 | punctuation characters in root names, because they are used and interpreted as
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| 99 | filenames and shell meta-characters (such as !, $, *, ?, etc.) embedded in them
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| 100 | may cause odd and unhelpful behavior. The slash (/), or any other character
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| 101 | that may be interpreted by anyone's file system (\e, $, [, ]), is especially
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| 102 | dangerous (terminfo is platform-independent, and choosing names with special
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| 103 | characters could someday make life difficult for users of a future port). The
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| 104 | dot (.) character is relatively safe as long as there is at most one per root
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| 105 | name; some historical terminfo names use it.
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| 106 | .PP
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| 107 | The root name for a terminal or workstation console type should almost always
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| 108 | begin with a vendor prefix (such as \fBhp\fR for Hewlett-Packard, \fBwy\fR for
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| 109 | Wyse, or \fBatt\fR for AT&T terminals), or a common name of the terminal line
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| 110 | (\fBvt\fR for the VT series of terminals from DEC, or \fBsun\fR for Sun
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| 111 | Microsystems workstation consoles, or \fBregent\fR for the ADDS Regent series.
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| 112 | You can list the terminfo tree to see what prefixes are already in common use.
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| 113 | The root name prefix should be followed when appropriate by a model number;
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| 114 | thus \fBvt100\fR, \fBhp2621\fR, \fBwy50\fR.
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| 115 | .PP
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| 116 | The root name for a PC-Unix console type should be the OS name,
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| 117 | i.e. \fBlinux\fR, \fBbsdos\fR, \fBfreebsd\fR, \fBnetbsd\fR. It should
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| 118 | \fInot\fR be \fBconsole\fR or any other generic that might cause confusion in a
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| 119 | multi-platform environment! If a model number follows, it should indicate
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| 120 | either the OS release level or the console driver release level.
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| 121 | .PP
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| 122 | The root name for a terminal emulator (assuming it doesn't fit one of the
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| 123 | standard ANSI or vt100 types) should be the program name or a readily
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| 124 | recognizable abbreviation of it (i.e. \fBversaterm\fR, \fBctrm\fR).
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| 125 | .PP
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| 126 | Following the root name, you may add any reasonable number of hyphen-separated
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| 127 | feature suffixes.
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| 128 | .TP 5
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| 129 | 2p
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| 130 | Has two pages of memory. Likewise 4p, 8p, etc.
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| 131 | .TP 5
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| 132 | mc
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| 133 | Magic-cookie. Some terminals (notably older Wyses) can only support one
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| 134 | attribute without magic-cookie lossage. Their base entry is usually paired
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| 135 | with another that has this suffix and uses magic cookies to support multiple
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| 136 | attributes.
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| 137 | .TP 5
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| 138 | -am
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| 139 | Enable auto-margin (right-margin wraparound).
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| 140 | .TP 5
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| 141 | -m
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| 142 | Mono mode - suppress color support.
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| 143 | .TP 5
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| 144 | -na
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| 145 | No arrow keys - termcap ignores arrow keys which are actually there on the
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| 146 | terminal, so the user can use the arrow keys locally.
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| 147 | .TP 5
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| 148 | -nam
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| 149 | No auto-margin - suppress am capability.
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| 150 | .TP 5
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| 151 | -nl
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| 152 | No labels - suppress soft labels.
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| 153 | .TP 5
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| 154 | -nsl
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| 155 | No status line - suppress status line.
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| 156 | .TP 5
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| 157 | -pp
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| 158 | Has a printer port which is used.
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| 159 | .TP 5
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| 160 | -rv
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| 161 | Terminal in reverse video mode (black on white).
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| 162 | .TP 5
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| 163 | -s
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| 164 | Enable status line.
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| 165 | .TP 5
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| 166 | -vb
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| 167 | Use visible bell (flash) rather than beep.
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| 168 | .TP 5
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| 169 | -w
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| 170 | Wide; terminal is in 132 column mode.
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| 171 | .PP
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| 172 | Conventionally, if your terminal type is a variant intended to specify a
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| 173 | line height, that suffix should go first. So, for a hypothetical FuBarCo
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| 174 | model 2317 terminal in 30-line mode with reverse video, best form would be
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| 175 | \fBfubar-30-rv\fR (rather than, say, `fubar-rv-30').
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| 176 | .PP
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| 177 | Terminal types that are written not as standalone entries, but rather as
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| 178 | components to be plugged into other entries via \fBuse\fP capabilities,
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| 179 | are distinguished by using embedded plus signs rather than dashes.
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| 180 | .PP
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| 181 | Commands which use a terminal type to control display often accept a -T
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| 182 | option that accepts a terminal name argument. Such programs should fall back
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| 183 | on the \fBTERM\fR environment variable when no -T option is specified.
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| 184 | .SH PORTABILITY
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| 185 | For maximum compatibility with older System V UNIXes, names and aliases
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| 186 | should be unique within the first 14 characters.
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| 187 | .SH FILES
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| 188 | .TP 5
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| 189 | \*d/?/*
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| 190 | compiled terminal capability data base
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| 191 | .TP 5
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| 192 | /etc/inittab
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| 193 | tty line initialization (AT&T-like UNIXes)
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| 194 | .TP 5
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| 195 | /etc/ttys
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| 196 | tty line initialization (BSD-like UNIXes)
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| 197 | .SH SEE ALSO
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| 198 | \fBcurses\fR(3X), \fBterminfo\fR(\*n), \fBterm\fR(\*n).
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| 199 | .\"#
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| 200 | .\"# The following sets edit modes for GNU EMACS
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| 201 | .\"# Local Variables:
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| 202 | .\"# mode:nroff
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| 203 | .\"# fill-column:79
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| 204 | .\"# End:
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