On 4/21/07, Angelina Carlton <address@hidden> wrote:
> Peter Beckman <address@hidden> writes:
> > I currently have my terminal setting to VT220 as xterm
> > caused me some headaches with resizing my window upon reconnecting to a
> > running screen session.
>
> I use rxvt-unicode for
> example and since I have installed this terminal on the hosts I ssh
> into, I have not had to set up much, my keys, and colors work as expected.
>
> I just found things improved once I found a
> terminal that has 256 colors and supports unicode and is installed on
> all my remote hosts.
rxvt-unicode supports 88 colours, not 256.
Basic rule of thumb: DON'T fuck with $TERM. $TERM represents the key
into the termcap/terminfo database, which in turn describes the
capabilities of your terminal to applications you are running. If you
set TERM=xterm when you're not running xterm (or a 100% xterm
compatible terminal), then the application's idea of the terminal
doesn't match reality, and weird shit can happen (as you've
discovered).
As Angelina said, the sensible way to deal with this is by making
sure all your hosts have accurate descriptions of the terminals you're
connecting via. You can install terminfo files into your home
directory (see terminfo(5) for details, "Fetching Compiled
Descriptions"), termcap I'm not really familiar with (it's the older
of the two), but pretty sure there's a solution.
But note that not all applications use termcap/terminfo - vim is a
notable exception. The most important implication here is mouse
support, screen positioning/colour codes are generally binary
compatible between terminals I believe.