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Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2015 20:25:05 -0800
From: Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>
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Subject: Re: ANSI bg colour outside of prompt area
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On 02/23/2015 06:53 PM, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> On Feb 23,  8:51am, Ray Andrews wrote:
> }
> } BTW, there seems to be a bit of fuzz in the term 'background' color.
> } Sometimes it seems to mean just the color behind any typed text, other
> } times it refers to the background of the whole screen. Are there more
> } unambiguous terms?
>
> As far as I know it always refes to the background of some text, but text
> includes "invisible" things like tabs and spaces, and clearing the screen
> writes spaces to every possible character location.

That would be the answer right there.
>
> Put another way, I expect that most terminal emulators treat the whole
> screen as a grid of character positions and color it by assigning to the
> background of every cell.  There is no other background.
Thanks, it's sorta obvious now that I see it--clearing the screen 
doesn't create 'nothing' it creates a screen of spaces.