termcap

termcap

[Will Yardley]

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so this may be a dumb question, but i haven't been able to find any
documentation that addresses this. 

i installed my own terminfo directory in $HOME/share/terminfo
in bash, i can do:

[sepia]$ echo $TERMINFO
/home/will/share/terminfo
[sepia]$ export TERM=xterm-xfree86
[sepia]$ echo $TERM
xterm-xfree86

but in zsh:
sepia% echo $TERMINFO
/home/will/share/terminfo
sepia% export TERM=xterm-xfree86
zsh: can't find termcap info for xterm-xfree86
ˆ‰%

this machine doesn't have zsh so i'm running zsh from $HOME/bin/
did i need to tell zsh the location of terminfo when i compiled it? do i
just need to set different environment variables?

if termcap is needed, i have a current copy of that in $HOME/etc/termcap

i'm having the same problem with tcsh, so i'm assuming there's just some
variable i need to set.

-w
 
-- 
Sintax error in config file! (line 378)
aborted!

PGP Public Key:
http://infinitejazz.net/will/pgp/

Re: termcap

[Clint Adams]

> this machine doesn't have zsh so i'm running zsh from $HOME/bin/
> did i need to tell zsh the location of terminfo when i compiled it? do i
> just need to set different environment variables?
> 
> if termcap is needed, i have a current copy of that in $HOME/etc/termcap
> 
> i'm having the same problem with tcsh, so i'm assuming there's just some
> variable i need to set.

bash treats the TERMINFO parameter as special, and resets the terminal every
time it changes.  zsh (and tcsh, I assume) don't currently know about this
variable.  Other than the zsh/terminfo module, zsh is dealing with
termcap or termcap emulation.

On the other hand, zsh does react when the TERM parameter is changed.
I have zsh linked against ncurses, which knows about TERMINFO even though
zsh doesn't, and if I export TERMINFO, then change TERM, it will happily
find the terminfo definitions in $TERMINFO.

Thus, I think you are either not exporting TERMINFO to the environment
or the library which is providing zsh with tgetent() and friends
doesn't care about that variable.

Re: termcap

[Will Yardley]

Clint Adams wrote:
> On the other hand, zsh does react when the TERM parameter is changed.
> I have zsh linked against ncurses, which knows about TERMINFO even
> though zsh doesn't, and if I export TERMINFO, then change TERM, it
> will happily find the terminfo definitions in $TERMINFO.

one more dumb question.  if i want to link zsh to the copy of ncurses in
my home directory instead of the machine's, but i still want to use the
remainder of the machine's include files, how do i need to configure
zsh?

i have ncurses 5.2 installed in ~/include and ~/lib with the terminfo
stuff in ~/share/terminfo

w

-- 
Sintax error in config file! (line 378)
aborted!

PGP Public Key:
http://infinitejazz.net/will/pgp/

Re: termcap

[Oliver Kiddle]

Will Yardley wrote:
> 
> so this may be a dumb question, but i haven't been able to find any
> documentation that addresses this.

We perhaps ought to mention that zsh error message in the FAQ.

> if termcap is needed, i have a current copy of that in $HOME/etc/termcap

Have you done export TERMCAP=~/etc/termcap so that it can find that
then?

I recently had problems with zsh on a Linux box understanding iris-ansi
terms which was solved by fixing the termcap entry so I'd assume it
isn't using terminfo.

Oliver

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Re: termcap

[Will Yardley]

Oliver Kiddle wrote:
> Will Yardley wrote:
 
> > if termcap is needed, i have a current copy of that in $HOME/etc/termcap

> Have you done export TERMCAP=~/etc/termcap so that it can find that
> then?

ahh ok - i had exported all 3, and even in the right order, but i was
exporting them all at once; ie:
export TERMCAP TERMINFO TERM
doing:
export TERMCAP=~/etc/termcap
and so on works great.  otherwise login shells weren't working properly
- just subsequent shells.

w

-- 
Sintax error in config file! (line 378)
aborted!

PGP Public Key:
http://infinitejazz.net/will/pgp/

Re: termcap

[Bart Schaefer]

On Sep 5,  3:03pm, Oliver Kiddle wrote:
}
} I recently had problems with zsh on a Linux box understanding iris-ansi
} terms which was solved by fixing the termcap entry so I'd assume it
} isn't using terminfo.

On all versions of RedHat linux at least up to 6.2, zsh uses termcap
unless configured with --enable-curses-terminfo.  I expect this is true
on several other linux distributions as well (except probably Debian).

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

Zsh: http://www.zsh.org | PHPerl Project: http://phperl.sourceforge.net