- Obtaining the window size from the terminal description is common to
- both implementations, but considered obsolescent. Its only practical
- use is for hardware terminals. Generally speaking, a window size would
- be unset only if there were some problem obtaining the value from the
- operating system (and <STRONG>setupterm</STRONG> would still fail). For that reason,
- the <EM>LINES</EM> and <EM>COLUMNS</EM> environment variables may be useful for working
- around window-size problems. Those have the drawback that if the
- window is resized, those variables must be recomputed and reassigned.
- To do this more easily, use the <STRONG>resize(1)</STRONG> program.
+ Obtaining the window size from a terminal's type description is common
+ to both implementations, but considered obsolescent. Its only
+ practical use is for hardware terminals. Generally, the window size
+ will remain uninitialized only if there were a problem obtaining the
+ value from the operating system (and <STRONG>setupterm</STRONG> would still fail). The
+ <EM>LINES</EM> and <EM>COLUMNS</EM> environment variables may thus be useful for working
+ around window-size problems, but have the drawback that if the window
+ is resized, their values must be recomputed and reassigned. The
+ <STRONG>resize(1)</STRONG> program distributed with <STRONG>xterm(1)</STRONG> assists this activity.