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At some point hitherto, Steven W. Orr hath spake thusly:
> This is complicated to explain, but please bear with me.
>
> I just upgraded from RH-7.2 to 7.3. My problem is that, for some reason,
> my backspace key no longer works in pine (as well as other problems).
> Here's my setup:
>
> I have a correct value set for my XFILESEARCHPATH and my
> XUSERFILESEARCHPATH variables. In my $XUSERFILESEARCHPATH I have a file
> called XTerm-color and in my .xinitrc I have this one line
I've had a similar problem, though it was different. But backspace
definitely did break for me the same way. I tried to get Red Hat to
fix the problem, but they refuse to acknowledge that there even IS a
problem. They only would say that xterm is no longer a supported
terminal emulator... you should be using gnome-terminal or konsole.
And this, despite the fact that I told them exactly how to reproduce
the bug, and how to fix it.
Some things to try:
Don't bother with XTerm-color -- it's not really necessary anymore.
xterm supports all the features of xterm-color. IIRC, there used to
be an xterm-color program, but it is no longer. Also, the only
terminfo entries that Red Hat has modified to fix the backspace
problem is xterm-redhat and xterm (which is just xterm-redhat).
Believe me, it's not worth your time to try to figure out termcap and
terminfo, to fix the problem for other termcap and terminfo entries.
Just use xterm.
Wherever you set your resources (I set ALL of my resources in
.Xdefaults -- I find it easier to keep track of them all that way),
add this line:
XTerm.termName: xterm
Now, change all of your resources that use XTerm-color to XTerm. If
you don't, you'll need to fix /etc/termcap and recompile terminfo
entries for xterm-color. If you really want to go that route, see the
man pages for captoinfo(1), infotocap(1), termcap(5), tput(1),
terminfo(5), and infocmp(1). And tic(1), tack(1), and toe(1) (no,
this is not a joke!)... Um, I think that's all of them. Oh, and
O'Reilly's _Termcap and Terminfo_.
Er, just use xterm. :)
Obviously I don't have your settings, so I can't test this, but the
resource above fixed the backspace problem for me. The actual problem
is that, at least with the version of xterm that comes with XFree86
4.1.0, if that resource is not set, xterm will read the terminfo
entries for first xterm, then xterm again, then vt102, then vt100,
then ansi, then dumb. Somewhere along the line, it sets the kbs
setting to ^H instead of <del>. If you set the termName resource to
xterm, it only reads the xterm entry, which has the kbs setting set
correctly to <del>.
I submitted this as a bug to the XFree86 people too, but I got no response.
I would really appreciate it if you would submit a bug report about
the backspace problem to Red Hat's bugzilla... if they get enough of
them, they might actually believe that there really *is* a problem,
and do something about it.
As I'm very particular about my X environment (who'd have imagined?),
I set a lot of useful resources in my .Xdefaults file. I've included
them below, in case you find them helpful. I've added comments for
some of the more esoteric settings.
Also note that:
.Xdefaults == startx
.Xresources == [xgk]dm
I have one symlinked to the other, so I always get the same thing.
/* xterm & related resources */
/* fix XFree86 4.1.0's xterm terminfo brokenness */
XTerm.termName: xterm
XTerm*scrollBar: true
XTerm*saveLines: 1000
/* always source my .profile in new xterms */
XTerm*loginShell: true
/* xrdb uses the C preprocessor, allowing for some */
/* useful tricks. See xrdb(1) for details. */
#if HEIGHT >= 1024
XTerm*font: 6x13
XTerm*font1: nil2
XTerm*font2: 5x7
XTerm*font3: 7x14
/* This is the svga framebuffer console font. You */
/* need the XFree86-ISO8859-7 fonts installed to */
/* use it. It's a very sharp 8x16 fixed-width font. */
XTerm*font4: grvga
XTerm*font5: 9x15
XTerm*font6: 10x20
XTerm*font7: 12x24
#else
XTerm*font: 6x12
XTerm*font1: nil2
XTerm*font2: 5x7
XTerm*font3: 6x13
XTerm*font4: 7x14
/* another name for the grvga font. Not available */
/* on all systems. I think it was present on 6.2 */
XTerm*font5: vga
XTerm*font6: 9x15
XTerm*font7: 10x20
#endif /* height */
XTerm.vt100.background: #000035
XTerm.vt100.foreground: LightGrey
XTerm*cursorColor: Yellow
/* turn on colorization of bold and underlined text */
XTerm*colorBDMode: True
XTerm*colorULMode: True
/* set the colors for bold and underlined text */
XTerm*colorBD: Cyan
XTerm*colorUL: Yellow
/* actually underline underlined text ;-) */
XTerm*VT100*underLine: true
/* disable the second vt100 screen. I don't like this feature,
* because when you enable it, /usr/bin/less uses it, and when you hit
* 'q' to exit less, it reverts to the first vt100 screen, and
* whatever output you paged in less is gone from the screen.
* Disabling the alternate vt100 screen leaves the output of less on
* the screen after you quit from it. Some people might prefer to
* have the screen revert to what was on it prior to running less...
* I don't.
*/
XTerm.VT100.titeInhibit: true
XTerm.VT100.color7: #909090
/* this is for an xterm started with the name "root" i.e.
* xterm -name root&
* I use this for xterms running as root, to differentiate them from
* xterms that are running with my regular user privileges.
*/
root.vt100.background: #003840
- --
Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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