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

[Russ Allbery]

Warren Young <address@hidden> writes:

> 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

VT220 is definitely not a non-ANSI terminal.  It's a direct descendent of
pretty much the *canonical* ANSI terminal.

You would need a Tektronix graphics terminal or something similar.  Or a
VT52, if you can find one outside of a museum.

> 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.

Lots of programs get the ANSI standard completely wrong.  Also, lots of
programs aren't familiar with what's guaranteed and what isn't.  But the
base color sequences should be either accepted or ignored by pretty much
every terminal anyone actually uses.  (I maintain some software that
handles this for Perl -- Term::ANSIColor -- without using ncurses because
ncurses is a very heavy dependency and isn't readily available on several
platforms on which Perl is available, and have gotten compatibility
information from a pretty large number of devices.)

> 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.

Yes, but the ESC [ N ; N m sequence is definitely supported by all of
those.

> This thread is about color.  My Link MC3+ doesn’t even *have* color, but
> it will do bold, underline, and blink.

Does it correctly ignore the color sequences that it doesn't support?

If you have examples of terminals that neither support nor ignore those
sequences, I'd very much like to know so that I can update my
compatibility chart.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>