Re: Request for inclusion of new xterm-kitty terminfo

[Nicholas Marriott]

On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 07:53:24AM +0530, Kovid Goyal wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 09, 2018 at 07:31:33PM +0300, Igor Urazov wrote:
> > Sorry, sent last message directly, submitting for mailing list this time.
> > 
> > On Sun, 9 Sep 2018 at 18:47, Igor Urazov <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > Thomas, thanks. What kind of licenses are suitable for you? I believe
> > > MIT or BSD are okay, right?
> > Also there is option to re-license terminfo file under CC, how about this?
> > 
> > As of "xterm-kitty", there was a reason why this name was picked. At
> > this moment ecosystem around terminal emulators accumulated a lot of
> > assumptions: if $TERM = "xterm-*", then do something for various
> > comparability reasons. Kovid, you have some examples, right? Thomas,
> > maybe you have some ideas how to keep this compatibility, if
> > xterm-kitty terminfo name is changed.
> 
> Sure I can dig up examples if needed, but this is a very common hack
> used by many terminal emulators. For example, termite uses xterm-termite
> gnome-terminal uses xterm-256color, konsole uses xterm-256color -- the
> list goes on and on. The question is why is it a problem for ncurses in
> the first place. Does xterm have some kind of most favored terminal
> status that gives it permanent ownership over all xterm-* names. And
> if so, IMO it is highly unfair. 

The solution to applications making assumptions based on a terminfo
entry's name rather than its capabilities is to fix those applications,
not to add a redundant "xterm-" prefix for terminals which are not
related to xterm.