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32<HTML>
33<HEAD>
34<TITLE>term 7</TITLE>
35<link rev=made href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">
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38<BODY>
39<H1>term 7</H1>
40<HR>
41<PRE>
42<!-- Manpage converted by man2html 3.0.1 -->
43<STRONG><A HREF="term.7.html">term(7)</A></STRONG> <STRONG><A HREF="term.7.html">term(7)</A></STRONG>
44
45
46
47
48</PRE>
49<H2>NAME</H2><PRE>
50 term - conventions for naming terminal types
51
52
53</PRE>
54<H2>DESCRIPTION</H2><PRE>
55 The environment variable <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> should normally contain the
56 type name of the terminal, console or display-device type
57 you are using. This information is critical for all
58 screen-oriented programs, including your editor and
59 mailer.
60
61 A default <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> value will be set on a per-line basis by
62 either <STRONG>/etc/inittab</STRONG> (Linux and System-V-like UNIXes) or
63 <STRONG>/etc/ttys</STRONG> (BSD UNIXes). This will nearly always suffice
64 for workstation and microcomputer consoles.
65
66 If you use a dialup line, the type of device attached to
67 it may vary. Older UNIX systems pre-set a very dumb ter-
68 minal type like `dumb' or `dialup' on dialup lines. Newer
69 ones may pre-set `vt100', reflecting the prevalence of DEC
70 VT100-compatible terminals and personal-computer emula-
71 tors.
72
73 Modern telnets pass your <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> environment variable from
74 the local side to the remote one. There can be problems
75 if the remote terminfo or termcap entry for your type is
76 not compatible with yours, but this situation is rare and
77 can almost always be avoided by explicitly exporting
78 `vt100' (assuming you are in fact using a VT100-superset
79 console, terminal, or terminal emulator.)
80
81 In any case, you are free to override the system <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> set-
82 ting to your taste in your shell profile. The <STRONG><A HREF="tset.1.html">tset(1)</A></STRONG>
83 utility may be of assistance; you can give it a set of
84 rules for deducing or requesting a terminal type based on
85 the tty device and baud rate.
86
87 Setting your own <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> value may also be useful if you have
88 created a custom entry incorporating options (such as
89 visual bell or reverse-video) which you wish to override
90 the system default type for your line.
91
92 Terminal type descriptions are stored as files of capabil-
93 ity data underneath /usr/share/terminfo. To browse a list
94 of all terminal names recognized by the system, do
95
96 toe | more
97
98 from your shell. These capability files are in a binary
99 format optimized for retrieval speed (unlike the old text-
100 based <STRONG>termcap</STRONG> format they replace); to examine an entry,
101 you must use the <STRONG><A HREF="infocmp.1m.html">infocmp(1m)</A></STRONG> command. Invoke it as fol-
102 lows:
103
104 infocmp <EM>entry-name</EM>
105
106 where <EM>entry-name</EM> is the name of the type you wish to exam-
107 ine (and the name of its capability file the subdirectory
108 of /usr/share/terminfo named for its first letter). This
109 command dumps a capability file in the text format
110 described by <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>.
111
112 The first line of a <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> description gives the
113 names by which terminfo knows a terminal, separated by `|'
114 (pipe-bar) characters with the last name field terminated
115 by a comma. The first name field is the type's <EM>primary</EM>
116 <EM>name</EM>, and is the one to use when setting <STRONG>TERM</STRONG>. The last
117 name field (if distinct from the first) is actually a
118 description of the terminal type (it may contain blanks;
119 the others must be single words). Name fields between the
120 first and last (if present) are aliases for the terminal,
121 usually historical names retained for compatibility.
122
123 There are some conventions for how to choose terminal pri-
124 mary names that help keep them informative and unique.
125 Here is a step-by-step guide to naming terminals that also
126 explains how to parse them:
127
128 First, choose a root name. The root will consist of a
129 lower-case letter followed by up to seven lower-case let-
130 ters or digits. You need to avoid using punctuation char-
131 acters in root names, because they are used and inter-
132 preted as filenames and shell meta-characters (such as !,
133 $, *, ?, etc.) embedded in them may cause odd and unhelp-
134 ful behavior. The slash (/), or any other character that
135 may be interpreted by anyone's file system (\, $, [, ]),
136 is especially dangerous (terminfo is platform-independent,
137 and choosing names with special characters could someday
138 make life difficult for users of a future port). The dot
139 (.) character is relatively safe as long as there is at
140 most one per root name; some historical terminfo names use
141 it.
142
143 The root name for a terminal or workstation console type
144 should almost always begin with a vendor prefix (such as
145 <STRONG>hp</STRONG> for Hewlett-Packard, <STRONG>wy</STRONG> for Wyse, or <STRONG>att</STRONG> for AT&amp;T ter-
146 minals), or a common name of the terminal line (<STRONG>vt</STRONG> for the
147 VT series of terminals from DEC, or <STRONG>sun</STRONG> for Sun Microsys-
148 tems workstation consoles, or <STRONG>regent</STRONG> for the ADDS Regent
149 series. You can list the terminfo tree to see what pre-
150 fixes are already in common use. The root name prefix
151 should be followed when appropriate by a model number;
152 thus <STRONG>vt100</STRONG>, <STRONG>hp2621</STRONG>, <STRONG>wy50</STRONG>.
153
154 The root name for a PC-Unix console type should be the OS
155 name, i.e. <STRONG>linux</STRONG>, <STRONG>bsdos</STRONG>, <STRONG>freebsd</STRONG>, <STRONG>netbsd</STRONG>. It should <EM>not</EM>
156 be <STRONG>console</STRONG> or any other generic that might cause confusion
157 in a multi-platform environment! If a model number fol-
158 lows, it should indicate either the OS release level or
159 the console driver release level.
160
161 The root name for a terminal emulator (assuming it does
162 not fit one of the standard ANSI or vt100 types) should be
163 the program name or a readily recognizable abbreviation of
164 it (i.e. <STRONG>versaterm</STRONG>, <STRONG>ctrm</STRONG>).
165
166 Following the root name, you may add any reasonable number
167 of hyphen-separated feature suffixes.
168
169 2p Has two pages of memory. Likewise 4p, 8p, etc.
170
171 mc Magic-cookie. Some terminals (notably older Wyses)
172 can only support one attribute without magic-cookie
173 lossage. Their base entry is usually paired with
174 another that has this suffix and uses magic cookies
175 to support multiple attributes.
176
177 -am Enable auto-margin (right-margin wraparound).
178
179 -m Mono mode - suppress color support.
180
181 -na No arrow keys - termcap ignores arrow keys which are
182 actually there on the terminal, so the user can use
183 the arrow keys locally.
184
185 -nam No auto-margin - suppress am capability.
186
187 -nl No labels - suppress soft labels.
188
189 -nsl No status line - suppress status line.
190
191 -pp Has a printer port which is used.
192
193 -rv Terminal in reverse video mode (black on white).
194
195 -s Enable status line.
196
197 -vb Use visible bell (flash) rather than beep.
198
199 -w Wide; terminal is in 132 column mode.
200
201 Conventionally, if your terminal type is a variant
202 intended to specify a line height, that suffix should go
203 first. So, for a hypothetical FuBarCo model 2317 terminal
204 in 30-line mode with reverse video, best form would be
205 <STRONG>fubar-30-rv</STRONG> (rather than, say, `fubar-rv-30').
206
207 Terminal types that are written not as standalone entries,
208 but rather as components to be plugged into other entries
209 via <STRONG>use</STRONG> capabilities, are distinguished by using embedded
210 plus signs rather than dashes.
211
212 Commands which use a terminal type to control display
213 often accept a -T option that accepts a terminal name
214 argument. Such programs should fall back on the <STRONG>TERM</STRONG>
215 environment variable when no -T option is specified.
216
217
218</PRE>
219<H2>PORTABILITY</H2><PRE>
220 For maximum compatibility with older System V UNIXes,
221 names and aliases should be unique within the first 14
222 characters.
223
224
225</PRE>
226<H2>FILES</H2><PRE>
227 /usr/share/terminfo/?/*
228 compiled terminal capability data base
229
230 /etc/inittab
231 tty line initialization (AT&amp;T-like UNIXes)
232
233 /etc/ttys
234 tty line initialization (BSD-like UNIXes)
235
236
237</PRE>
238<H2>SEE ALSO</H2><PRE>
239 <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">curses(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="term.5.html">term(5)</A></STRONG>.
240
241
242
243 <STRONG><A HREF="term.7.html">term(7)</A></STRONG>
244</PRE>
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