Setting TERM

[Barry Margolin]

In article <184 at graffiti.UUCP> peter at graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>I would think that if all the terminals were ANSI standard you wouldn't need
>to find the terminal type, and you could throw termcap/terminfo out. Just
>wondering how useful this knowledge is...

You would think wrongly.  The problem is that the ANSI standard merely
specifies that if a device implements a particular operation, than it is
invoked by a specified escape sequence.  It DOESN'T specify the set of
features that must be implemented.  This is of necessity, since the
standard applies to all types of terminals, video AND printing.  Thus,
an ANSI standard printing terminal would not implement many commands
that an ANSI standard video terminal might.

As a concrete example, both the VT100 and VT102 terminals use ANSI
escape sequences; however, the VT100 does not implement insert/delete
line/character operations, whereas the VT102 does.

The most annoying fact, though, is that the standard provides no way for
a system to query the device to determine what features it has.
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar at MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar