2 ****************************************************************************
3 * Copyright (c) 1998-2010,2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
5 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a *
6 * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the *
7 * "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including *
8 * without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, *
9 * distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell *
10 * copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is *
11 * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: *
13 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included *
14 * in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. *
16 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS *
17 * OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF *
18 * MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. *
19 * IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, *
20 * DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR *
21 * OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR *
22 * THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. *
24 * Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright *
25 * holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the *
26 * sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written *
28 ****************************************************************************
29 * @Id: term.7,v 1.23 2011/12/17 23:32:17 tom Exp @
31 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
34 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
35 <meta name="generator" content="Manpage converted by man2html - see http://invisible-island.net/scripts/readme.html#others_scripts">
37 <link rev=made href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">
38 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
44 <STRONG><A HREF="term.7.html">term(7)</A></STRONG> <STRONG><A HREF="term.7.html">term(7)</A></STRONG>
50 <H2><a name="h2-NAME">NAME</a></H2><PRE>
51 term - conventions for naming terminal types
55 <H2><a name="h2-DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a></H2><PRE>
56 The environment variable <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> should normally contain the
57 type name of the terminal, console or display-device type
58 you are using. This information is critical for all
59 screen-oriented programs, including your editor and
62 A default <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> value will be set on a per-line basis by
63 either <STRONG>/etc/inittab</STRONG> (e.g., System-V-like UNIXes) or
64 <STRONG>/etc/ttys</STRONG> (BSD UNIXes). This will nearly always suffice
65 for workstation and microcomputer consoles.
67 If you use a dialup line, the type of device attached to
68 it may vary. Older UNIX systems pre-set a very dumb ter-
69 minal type like `dumb' or `dialup' on dialup lines. Newer
70 ones may pre-set `vt100', reflecting the prevalence of DEC
71 VT100-compatible terminals and personal-computer emula-
74 Modern telnets pass your <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> environment variable from
75 the local side to the remote one. There can be problems
76 if the remote terminfo or termcap entry for your type is
77 not compatible with yours, but this situation is rare and
78 can almost always be avoided by explicitly exporting
79 `vt100' (assuming you are in fact using a VT100-superset
80 console, terminal, or terminal emulator.)
82 In any case, you are free to override the system <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> set-
83 ting to your taste in your shell profile. The <STRONG><A HREF="tset.1.html">tset(1)</A></STRONG>
84 utility may be of assistance; you can give it a set of
85 rules for deducing or requesting a terminal type based on
86 the tty device and baud rate.
88 Setting your own <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> value may also be useful if you have
89 created a custom entry incorporating options (such as vis-
90 ual bell or reverse-video) which you wish to override the
91 system default type for your line.
93 Terminal type descriptions are stored as files of capabil-
94 ity data underneath /usr/share/terminfo. To browse a list
95 of all terminal names recognized by the system, do
99 from your shell. These capability files are in a binary
100 format optimized for retrieval speed (unlike the old text-
101 based <STRONG>termcap</STRONG> format they replace); to examine an entry,
102 you must use the <STRONG><A HREF="infocmp.1m.html">infocmp(1m)</A></STRONG> command. Invoke it as fol-
105 infocmp <EM>entry</EM><STRONG>_</STRONG><EM>name</EM>
107 where <EM>entry</EM><STRONG>_</STRONG><EM>name</EM> is the name of the type you wish to exam-
108 ine (and the name of its capability file the subdirectory
109 of /usr/share/terminfo named for its first letter). This
110 command dumps a capability file in the text format
111 described by <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>.
113 The first line of a <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> description gives the
114 names by which terminfo knows a terminal, separated by `|'
115 (pipe-bar) characters with the last name field terminated
116 by a comma. The first name field is the type's <EM>primary</EM>
117 <EM>name</EM>, and is the one to use when setting <STRONG>TERM</STRONG>. The last
118 name field (if distinct from the first) is actually a
119 description of the terminal type (it may contain blanks;
120 the others must be single words). Name fields between the
121 first and last (if present) are aliases for the terminal,
122 usually historical names retained for compatibility.
124 There are some conventions for how to choose terminal pri-
125 mary names that help keep them informative and unique.
126 Here is a step-by-step guide to naming terminals that also
127 explains how to parse them:
129 First, choose a root name. The root will consist of a
130 lower-case letter followed by up to seven lower-case let-
131 ters or digits. You need to avoid using punctuation char-
132 acters in root names, because they are used and inter-
133 preted as filenames and shell meta-characters (such as !,
134 $, *, ?, etc.) embedded in them may cause odd and unhelp-
135 ful behavior. The slash (/), or any other character that
136 may be interpreted by anyone's file system (\, $, [, ]),
137 is especially dangerous (terminfo is platform-independent,
138 and choosing names with special characters could someday
139 make life difficult for users of a future port). The dot
140 (.) character is relatively safe as long as there is at
141 most one per root name; some historical terminfo names use
144 The root name for a terminal or workstation console type
145 should almost always begin with a vendor prefix (such as
146 <STRONG>hp</STRONG> for Hewlett-Packard, <STRONG>wy</STRONG> for Wyse, or <STRONG>att</STRONG> for AT&T ter-
147 minals), or a common name of the terminal line (<STRONG>vt</STRONG> for the
148 VT series of terminals from DEC, or <STRONG>sun</STRONG> for Sun Microsys-
149 tems workstation consoles, or <STRONG>regent</STRONG> for the ADDS Regent
150 series. You can list the terminfo tree to see what pre-
151 fixes are already in common use. The root name prefix
152 should be followed when appropriate by a model number;
153 thus <STRONG>vt100</STRONG>, <STRONG>hp2621</STRONG>, <STRONG>wy50</STRONG>.
155 The root name for a PC-Unix console type should be the OS
156 name, i.e., <STRONG>linux</STRONG>, <STRONG>bsdos</STRONG>, <STRONG>freebsd</STRONG>, <STRONG>netbsd</STRONG>. It should <EM>not</EM>
157 be <STRONG>console</STRONG> or any other generic that might cause confusion
158 in a multi-platform environment! If a model number fol-
159 lows, it should indicate either the OS release level or
160 the console driver release level.
162 The root name for a terminal emulator (assuming it does
163 not fit one of the standard ANSI or vt100 types) should be
164 the program name or a readily recognizable abbreviation of
165 it (i.e., <STRONG>versaterm</STRONG>, <STRONG>ctrm</STRONG>).
167 Following the root name, you may add any reasonable number
168 of hyphen-separated feature suffixes.
170 2p Has two pages of memory. Likewise 4p, 8p, etc.
172 mc Magic-cookie. Some terminals (notably older Wyses)
173 can only support one attribute without magic-cookie
174 lossage. Their base entry is usually paired with
175 another that has this suffix and uses magic cookies
176 to support multiple attributes.
178 -am Enable auto-margin (right-margin wraparound).
180 -m Mono mode - suppress color support.
182 -na No arrow keys - termcap ignores arrow keys which are
183 actually there on the terminal, so the user can use
184 the arrow keys locally.
186 -nam No auto-margin - suppress am capability.
188 -nl No labels - suppress soft labels.
190 -nsl No status line - suppress status line.
192 -pp Has a printer port which is used.
194 -rv Terminal in reverse video mode (black on white).
196 -s Enable status line.
198 -vb Use visible bell (flash) rather than beep.
200 -w Wide; terminal is in 132 column mode.
202 Conventionally, if your terminal type is a variant
203 intended to specify a line height, that suffix should go
204 first. So, for a hypothetical FuBarCo model 2317 terminal
205 in 30-line mode with reverse video, best form would be
206 <STRONG>fubar-30-rv</STRONG> (rather than, say, `fubar-rv-30').
208 Terminal types that are written not as standalone entries,
209 but rather as components to be plugged into other entries
210 via <STRONG>use</STRONG> capabilities, are distinguished by using embedded
211 plus signs rather than dashes.
213 Commands which use a terminal type to control display
214 often accept a -T option that accepts a terminal name
215 argument. Such programs should fall back on the <STRONG>TERM</STRONG>
216 environment variable when no -T option is specified.
220 <H2><a name="h2-PORTABILITY">PORTABILITY</a></H2><PRE>
221 For maximum compatibility with older System V UNIXes,
222 names and aliases should be unique within the first 14
227 <H2><a name="h2-FILES">FILES</a></H2><PRE>
228 /usr/share/terminfo/?/*
229 compiled terminal capability data base
232 tty line initialization (AT&T-like UNIXes)
235 tty line initialization (BSD-like UNIXes)
239 <H2><a name="h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></H2><PRE>
240 <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">curses(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="term.5.html">term(5)</A></STRONG>.
244 <STRONG><A HREF="term.7.html">term(7)</A></STRONG>
248 <li><a href="#h2-NAME">NAME</a></li>
249 <li><a href="#h2-DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a></li>
250 <li><a href="#h2-PORTABILITY">PORTABILITY</a></li>
251 <li><a href="#h2-FILES">FILES</a></li>
252 <li><a href="#h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></li>