From time to time I have terminal emulation problems with M-x term in
Emacs. I'm never certain whether the problems are caused by me and my
environment variables or by term.el itself. Maybe you can help me figure
it out.
I use the multi-tty branch (based on CVS Emacs) and use M-x term to connect
to lots of different hosts and then run screen on each host. I put a
compiled version of eterm-color.ti on every host in ~/.terminfo and export
TERMINFO=~/.terminfo. I compile eterm-color.ti once per OS version (e.g.,
HP-UX, Solaris, Debian, etc) and copy it around.
Here's what I do; what's wrong with it? If nothing's wrong, presumably
there are problems in term.el and I'll set about debugging those.
1. Run xterm (TERM=xterm)
2. Run screen (which sets TERM=screen)
3. Run multi-tty emacs in TTY mode (i.e., no X window gets created)
4. Detach from screen and get back to the xterm
5. Run multi-tty's emacsclient to attach to the Emacs that's already
running. This time, an X window is created with Emacs inside.
6. Run a shell inside of Emacs' terminal emulator (TERM=eterm-color)
7. ssh to a remote host and get a shell (TERM=eterm-color)
8. Run screen (which sets TERM=screen)
9. Run vi or some other full screen app.
Thanks for any help!
Does screen use the "csr" terminfo capability? (You can check like this:
M-x term-start-output-log, then run screen then look at the log for
the "csr" terminfo string)
"csr" is one of the things that M-x term has had problems with. Also
smir/rmir might still have issues.
You try removing csr, smir and rmir from eterm-color.ti and see if
you still have problems.
Note that eterm-color terminfo strings are almost the same as the
xterm ones. If you save the M-x term output log to a file and run
cat LOG in an xterm with the same number of lines and columns as the
xterm buffer, the xterm should display the same thing as the
M-x term buffer. If it does not, then it's probably an issue with
M-x term
--dan