1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
3 ****************************************************************************
4 * Copyright (c) 1998-2000,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
6 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a *
7 * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the *
8 * "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including *
9 * without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, *
10 * distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell *
11 * copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is *
12 * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: *
14 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included *
15 * in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. *
17 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS *
18 * OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF *
19 * MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. *
20 * IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, *
21 * DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR *
22 * OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR *
23 * THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. *
25 * Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright *
26 * holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the *
27 * sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written *
29 ****************************************************************************
30 * @Id: term.7,v 1.13 2002/04/20 16:50:47 tom Exp @
35 <link rev=made href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">
36 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
42 <!-- Manpage converted by man2html 3.0.1 -->
46 term - conventions for naming terminal types
50 <H2>DESCRIPTION</H2><PRE>
51 The environment variable <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> should normally contain the
52 type name of the terminal, console or display-device type
53 you are using. This information is critical for all
54 screen-oriented programs, including your editor and
57 A default <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> value will be set on a per-line basis by
58 either <STRONG>/etc/inittab</STRONG> (Linux and System-V-like UNIXes) or
59 <STRONG>/etc/ttys</STRONG> (BSD UNIXes). This will nearly always suffice
60 for workstation and microcomputer consoles.
62 If you use a dialup line, the type of device attached to
63 it may vary. Older UNIX systems pre-set a very dumb ter-
64 minal type like `dumb' or `dialup' on dialup lines. Newer
65 ones may pre-set `vt100', reflecting the prevalence of DEC
66 VT100-compatible terminals and personal-computer emula-
69 Modern telnets pass your <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> environment variable from
70 the local side to the remote one. There can be problems
71 if the remote terminfo or termcap entry for your type is
72 not compatible with yours, but this situation is rare and
73 can almost always be avoided by explicitly exporting
74 `vt100' (assuming you are in fact using a VT100-superset
75 console, terminal, or terminal emulator.)
77 In any case, you are free to override the system <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> set-
78 ting to your taste in your shell profile. The <STRONG><A HREF="tset.1.html">tset(1)</A></STRONG>
79 utility may be of assistance; you can give it a set of
80 rules for deducing or requesting a terminal type based on
81 the tty device and baud rate.
83 Setting your own <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> value may also be useful if you have
84 created a custom entry incorporating options (such as
85 visual bell or reverse-video) which you wish to override
86 the system default type for your line.
88 Terminal type descriptions are stored as files of capabil-
89 ity data underneath /usr/share/terminfo. To browse a list
90 of all terminal names recognized by the system, do
94 from your shell. These capability files are in a binary
95 format optimized for retrieval speed (unlike the old text-
96 based <STRONG>termcap</STRONG> format they replace); to examine an entry,
97 you must use the <STRONG><A HREF="infocmp.1.html">infocmp(1)</A></STRONG> command. Invoke it as fol-
100 infocmp <EM>entry-name</EM>
102 where <EM>entry-name</EM> is the name of the type you wish to exam-
103 ine (and the name of its capability file the subdirectory
104 of /usr/share/terminfo named for its first letter). This
105 command dumps a capability file in the text format
106 described by <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>.
108 The first line of a <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> description gives the
109 names by which terminfo knows a terminal, separated by `|'
110 (pipe-bar) characters with the last name field terminated
111 by a comma. The first name field is the type's <EM>primary</EM>
112 <EM>name</EM>, and is the one to use when setting <STRONG>TERM</STRONG>. The last
113 name field (if distinct from the first) is actually a
114 description of the terminal type (it may contain blanks;
115 the others must be single words). Name fields between the
116 first and last (if present) are aliases for the terminal,
117 usually historical names retained for compatibility.
119 There are some conventions for how to choose terminal pri-
120 mary names that help keep them informative and unique.
121 Here is a step-by-step guide to naming terminals that also
122 explains how to parse them:
124 First, choose a root name. The root will consist of a
125 lower-case letter followed by up to seven lower-case let-
126 ters or digits. You need to avoid using punctuation char-
127 acters in root names, because they are used and inter-
128 preted as filenames and shell meta-characters (such as !,
129 $, *, ? etc.) embedded in them may cause odd and unhelpful
130 behavior. The slash (/), or any other character that may
131 be interpreted by anyone's file system (\, $, [, ]), is
132 especially dangerous (terminfo is platform-independent,
133 and choosing names with special characters could someday
134 make life difficult for users of a future port). The dot
135 (.) character is relatively safe as long as there is at
136 most one per root name; some historical terminfo names use
139 The root name for a terminal or workstation console type
140 should almost always begin with a vendor prefix (such as
141 <STRONG>hp</STRONG> for Hewlett-Packard, <STRONG>wy</STRONG> for Wyse, or <STRONG>att</STRONG> for AT&T ter-
142 minals), or a common name of the terminal line (<STRONG>vt</STRONG> for the
143 VT series of terminals from DEC, or <STRONG>sun</STRONG> for Sun Microsys-
144 tems workstation consoles, or <STRONG>regent</STRONG> for the ADDS Regent
145 series. You can list the terminfo tree to see what pre-
146 fixes are already in common use. The root name prefix
147 should be followed when appropriate by a model number;
148 thus <STRONG>vt100</STRONG>, <STRONG>hp2621</STRONG>, <STRONG>wy50</STRONG>.
150 The root name for a PC-Unix console type should be the OS
151 name, i.e. <STRONG>linux</STRONG>, <STRONG>bsdos</STRONG>, <STRONG>freebsd</STRONG>, <STRONG>netbsd</STRONG>. It should <EM>not</EM>
152 be <STRONG>console</STRONG> or any other generic that might cause confusion
153 in a multi-platform environment! If a model number fol-
154 lows, it should indicate either the OS release level or
155 the console driver release level.
156 The root name for a terminal emulator (assuming it doesn't
157 fit one of the standard ANSI or vt100 types) should be the
158 program name or a readily recognizable abbreviation of it
159 (i.e. <STRONG>versaterm</STRONG>, <STRONG>ctrm</STRONG>).
161 Following the root name, you may add any reasonable number
162 of hyphen-separated feature suffixes.
164 2p Has two pages of memory. Likewise 4p, 8p, etc.
166 mc Magic-cookie. Some terminals (notably older Wyses)
167 can only support one attribute without magic-cookie
168 lossage. Their base entry is usually paired with
169 another that has this suffix and uses magic cookies
170 to support multiple attributes.
172 -am Enable auto-margin (right-margin wraparound)
174 -m Mono mode - suppress color support
176 -na No arrow keys - termcap ignores arrow keys which are
177 actually there on the terminal, so the user can use
178 the arrow keys locally.
180 -nam No auto-margin - suppress am capability
182 -nl No labels - suppress soft labels
184 -nsl No status line - suppress status line
186 -pp Has a printer port which is used.
188 -rv Terminal in reverse video mode (black on white)
190 -s Enable status line.
192 -vb Use visible bell (flash) rather than beep.
194 -w Wide; terminal is in 132 column mode.
196 Conventionally, if your terminal type is a variant
197 intended to specify a line height, that suffix should go
198 first. So, for a hypothetical FuBarCo model 2317 terminal
199 in 30-line mode with reverse video, best form would be
200 <STRONG>fubar-30-rv</STRONG> (rather than, say, `fubar-rv-30').
202 Terminal types that are written not as standalone entries,
203 but rather as components to be plugged into other entries
204 via <STRONG>use</STRONG> capabilities, are distinguished by using embedded
205 plus signs rather than dashes.
207 Commands which use a terminal type to control display
208 often accept a -T option that accepts a terminal name
209 argument. Such programs should fall back on the <STRONG>TERM</STRONG>
210 environment variable when no -T option is specified.
214 <H2>PORTABILITY</H2><PRE>
215 For maximum compatibility with older System V UNIXes,
216 names and aliases should be unique within the first 14
222 /usr/share/terminfo/?/*
223 compiled terminal capability data base
226 tty line initialization (AT&T-like UNIXes).
229 tty line initialization (BSD-like UNIXes).
233 <H2>SEE ALSO</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>.
273 Man(1) output converted with
274 <a href="http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/man2html.html">man2html</a>