Re: Flicker with tmux or screen

[Thomas Dickey]

On Tue, 11 Jan 2011, Eitan Adler wrote:

> Hi,
> In an application I'm working on appears to work normally - except
> when run under screen or tmux. When I do that I get severe flicker.
> What might be the cause of that - and what could I look into to try
> and fix this?

You didn't mention what terminal (emulator) and TERM you are using.
screen changes TERM (see its manpage).

Perhaps this: screen's terminal description doesn't say that it can
(if built and configured appropriately) erase backgrounds filling with
the currently-selected color.  An application making lots of repainting
of colored text will run slower for terminals of this sort, since they
must send extra blanks to fill the background.

In screen's manpage this is:

       bce [on|off]

       Change background-color-erase setting. If "bce" is set to on, all char-
       acters cleared by an erase/insert/scroll/clear operation will  be  dis-
       played  in  the  current  background color. Otherwise the default back-
       ground color is used.

       defbce on|off

       Same as the bce command except that the default setting for new windows
       is changed. Initial setting is `off'.

That also requires that TERM be set to a description which has "bce" set.

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net