Re: automake: tap-driver.sh: cleanup and revival.

[Warren Young]

On Oct 25, 2017, at 6:03 PM, Russ Allbery <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Warren Young <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> As for the portability of ANSI terminal escape codes, it’s still best to
>> delegate such things to curses or libraries like it, despite the near
>> ubiquity of ANSI-family terminal emulators.
> 
> Does anyone really use a non-ANSI terminal to run Automake test suites?

I’ve never even used the Automake test suite features, but I do currently have 
a Raspberry Pi connected to a VT220 clone as the serial console:

    https://tangentsoft.com/pidp8i/wiki?name=Warren%27s+PiDP-8/I+System

I’ve run programs through it that have not done the right thing despite my TERM 
being set appropriately, suggesting they’ve got ANSI X3.64 — or more likely, 
xterm-color[256] — expectations hard-coded into them.

Also, I gave the “TERM=dumb ./myprogram” example in a later reply.

Although DEC’s VT series, TERM=linux, xterm[-color[256]], and more are all 
loosely related, the Venn diagram for it would probably be pretty messy.

This thread is about color.  My Link MC3+ doesn’t even *have* color, but it 
will do bold, underline, and blink.  Why should Autoconf care what my terminal 
can do?  The operating system has a database mapping what my terminal can do to 
a common API.  Let the library handle it.