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">
41 <H1 class="no-header">term 7</H1>
43 <STRONG><A HREF="term.7.html">term(7)</A></STRONG> <STRONG><A HREF="term.7.html">term(7)</A></STRONG>
48 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-NAME">NAME</a></H2><PRE>
49 term - conventions for naming terminal types
52 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a></H2><PRE>
53 The environment variable <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> should normally contain the
54 type name of the terminal, console or display-device type
55 you are using. This information is critical for all
56 screen-oriented programs, including your editor and
59 A default <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> value will be set on a per-line basis by
60 either <STRONG>/etc/inittab</STRONG> (e.g., System-V-like UNIXes) or
61 <STRONG>/etc/ttys</STRONG> (BSD UNIXes). This will nearly always suffice
62 for workstation and microcomputer consoles.
64 If you use a dialup line, the type of device attached to
65 it may vary. Older UNIX systems pre-set a very dumb ter-
66 minal type like `dumb' or `dialup' on dialup lines. Newer
67 ones may pre-set `vt100', reflecting the prevalence of DEC
68 VT100-compatible terminals and personal-computer emula-
71 Modern telnets pass your <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> environment variable from
72 the local side to the remote one. There can be problems
73 if the remote terminfo or termcap entry for your type is
74 not compatible with yours, but this situation is rare and
75 can almost always be avoided by explicitly exporting
76 `vt100' (assuming you are in fact using a VT100-superset
77 console, terminal, or terminal emulator.)
79 In any case, you are free to override the system <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> set-
80 ting to your taste in your shell profile. The <STRONG><A HREF="tset.1.html">tset(1)</A></STRONG>
81 utility may be of assistance; you can give it a set of
82 rules for deducing or requesting a terminal type based on
83 the tty device and baud rate.
85 Setting your own <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> value may also be useful if you have
86 created a custom entry incorporating options (such as vis-
87 ual bell or reverse-video) which you wish to override the
88 system default type for your line.
90 Terminal type descriptions are stored as files of capabil-
91 ity data underneath /usr/share/terminfo. To browse a list
92 of all terminal names recognized by the system, do
96 from your shell. These capability files are in a binary
97 format optimized for retrieval speed (unlike the old text-
98 based <STRONG>termcap</STRONG> format they replace); to examine an entry,
99 you must use the <STRONG><A HREF="infocmp.1m.html">infocmp(1m)</A></STRONG> command. Invoke it as fol-
102 infocmp <EM>entry</EM><STRONG>_</STRONG><EM>name</EM>
104 where <EM>entry</EM><STRONG>_</STRONG><EM>name</EM> is the name of the type you wish to exam-
105 ine (and the name of its capability file the subdirectory
106 of /usr/share/terminfo named for its first letter). This
107 command dumps a capability file in the text format
108 described by <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>.
110 The first line of a <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> description gives the
111 names by which terminfo knows a terminal, separated by `|'
112 (pipe-bar) characters with the last name field terminated
113 by a comma. The first name field is the type's <EM>primary</EM>
114 <EM>name</EM>, and is the one to use when setting <STRONG>TERM</STRONG>. The last
115 name field (if distinct from the first) is actually a
116 description of the terminal type (it may contain blanks;
117 the others must be single words). Name fields between the
118 first and last (if present) are aliases for the terminal,
119 usually historical names retained for compatibility.
121 There are some conventions for how to choose terminal pri-
122 mary names that help keep them informative and unique.
123 Here is a step-by-step guide to naming terminals that also
124 explains how to parse them:
126 First, choose a root name. The root will consist of a
127 lower-case letter followed by up to seven lower-case let-
128 ters or digits. You need to avoid using punctuation char-
129 acters in root names, because they are used and inter-
130 preted as filenames and shell meta-characters (such as !,
131 $, *, ?, etc.) embedded in them may cause odd and unhelp-
132 ful behavior. The slash (/), or any other character that
133 may be interpreted by anyone's file system (\, $, [, ]),
134 is especially dangerous (terminfo is platform-independent,
135 and choosing names with special characters could someday
136 make life difficult for users of a future port). The dot
137 (.) character is relatively safe as long as there is at
138 most one per root name; some historical terminfo names use
141 The root name for a terminal or workstation console type
142 should almost always begin with a vendor prefix (such as
143 <STRONG>hp</STRONG> for Hewlett-Packard, <STRONG>wy</STRONG> for Wyse, or <STRONG>att</STRONG> for AT&T ter-
144 minals), or a common name of the terminal line (<STRONG>vt</STRONG> for the
145 VT series of terminals from DEC, or <STRONG>sun</STRONG> for Sun Microsys-
146 tems workstation consoles, or <STRONG>regent</STRONG> for the ADDS Regent
147 series. You can list the terminfo tree to see what pre-
148 fixes are already in common use. The root name prefix
149 should be followed when appropriate by a model number;
150 thus <STRONG>vt100</STRONG>, <STRONG>hp2621</STRONG>, <STRONG>wy50</STRONG>.
152 The root name for a PC-Unix console type should be the OS
153 name, i.e., <STRONG>linux</STRONG>, <STRONG>bsdos</STRONG>, <STRONG>freebsd</STRONG>, <STRONG>netbsd</STRONG>. It should <EM>not</EM>
154 be <STRONG>console</STRONG> or any other generic that might cause confusion
155 in a multi-platform environment! If a model number fol-
156 lows, it should indicate either the OS release level or
157 the console driver release level.
159 The root name for a terminal emulator (assuming it does
160 not fit one of the standard ANSI or vt100 types) should be
161 the program name or a readily recognizable abbreviation of
162 it (i.e., <STRONG>versaterm</STRONG>, <STRONG>ctrm</STRONG>).
164 Following the root name, you may add any reasonable number
165 of hyphen-separated feature suffixes.
167 2p Has two pages of memory. Likewise 4p, 8p, etc.
169 mc Magic-cookie. Some terminals (notably older Wyses)
170 can only support one attribute without magic-cookie
171 lossage. Their base entry is usually paired with
172 another that has this suffix and uses magic cookies
173 to support multiple attributes.
175 -am Enable auto-margin (right-margin wraparound).
177 -m Mono mode - suppress color support.
179 -na No arrow keys - termcap ignores arrow keys which are
180 actually there on the terminal, so the user can use
181 the arrow keys locally.
183 -nam No auto-margin - suppress am capability.
185 -nl No labels - suppress soft labels.
187 -nsl No status line - suppress status line.
189 -pp Has a printer port which is used.
191 -rv Terminal in reverse video mode (black on white).
193 -s Enable status line.
195 -vb Use visible bell (flash) rather than beep.
197 -w Wide; terminal is in 132 column mode.
199 Conventionally, if your terminal type is a variant
200 intended to specify a line height, that suffix should go
201 first. So, for a hypothetical FuBarCo model 2317 terminal
202 in 30-line mode with reverse video, best form would be
203 <STRONG>fubar-30-rv</STRONG> (rather than, say, `fubar-rv-30').
205 Terminal types that are written not as standalone entries,
206 but rather as components to be plugged into other entries
207 via <STRONG>use</STRONG> capabilities, are distinguished by using embedded
208 plus signs rather than dashes.
210 Commands which use a terminal type to control display
211 often accept a -T option that accepts a terminal name
212 argument. Such programs should fall back on the <STRONG>TERM</STRONG>
213 environment variable when no -T option is specified.
216 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-PORTABILITY">PORTABILITY</a></H2><PRE>
217 For maximum compatibility with older System V UNIXes,
218 names and aliases should be unique within the first 14
222 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-FILES">FILES</a></H2><PRE>
223 /usr/share/terminfo/?/*
224 compiled terminal capability data base
227 tty line initialization (AT&T-like UNIXes)
230 tty line initialization (BSD-like UNIXes)
233 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></H2><PRE>
234 <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>.
238 <STRONG><A HREF="term.7.html">term(7)</A></STRONG>
242 <li><a href="#h2-NAME">NAME</a></li>
243 <li><a href="#h2-DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a></li>
244 <li><a href="#h2-PORTABILITY">PORTABILITY</a></li>
245 <li><a href="#h2-FILES">FILES</a></li>
246 <li><a href="#h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></li>