Gentoo portage and screen

[David Cannings]

I have been using the following with good success recently in screen:

caption always "%{= bb}%{+b w}Screen: %n | %h %=%t %c"
hardstatus alwayslastline "%-Lw%{= BW}%50>%n%f* %t%{-}%+Lw%<"

However, a recent update to portage on all of my Gentoo systems has now
changed its behaviour.  It seems the portage not only writes to the
caption but also to the hardstatus, replacing the name of the window
with "emerge 10/252...", which can often span 50+ characters.  Is there
any reason a program should be writing to the section that contains the
window name?  I have built the above caption/hardstatus up over a few
years from snippets on this list and websites and, ashamedly, have never
looked up exactly what each variable is, so possibly I'm wrong.

If this is incorrect behaviour on the part of Gentoo's portage, I will
report it as a bug.  If it's simply annoying behaviour, I will consider
asking for it to be changed.  I'm not sure many people will have seen
what I am seeing, however it is still a pain for me.

David