Bug#368916: gnome-terminal: $TERM should be set to gnome instead of xterm
Hi, I've been an active contributor/developer of gnome-terminal in the last 1.5 years. I firmly disagree with Christoph's comment Apparently upstream intentionally breaks things or simply doesn't care. We do care, and we worked hard recently to make gnome-terminal work reasonably close to xterm. Just look at the changelog and count how many emulation fixes we had in the last 1.5 years! Gnome-terminal has set TERM=xterm for a long time, and xterm is our reference as for how the terminal should work. On the other hand, TERM=gnome, which is written and maintained (probably not maintained actively too much) by xterm/terminfo's maintainer, is probably way out of date. Without looking at the details, I'm quite sure that TERM=xterm is way closer to describe gnome-terminal's behavior than TERM=gnome. And even if someone updates and corrects the gnome terminal description, we'd have to wait years until it's deployed to most of the hosts where you'd want to ssh to. Sure it's not perfect, but incorrectly reporting blink support is probably a magnitudes smaller problem than the ones you'd face with TERM=gnome. *If* someone updates TERM=gnome and keeps it updated, changing to that as the default might become a viable option in maybe 5 years or so. Over the last year or two we fixed plenty of _actual_ bugs where the emulation was incorrect. Christoph found the tinyest and most negligible feature that we promise to support but actually don't (i.e. blinking), and riding this he wants to push towards a completely different design which would have way more severe bugs which he can't foresee. With further details/discussions in the mainstream bugreport, I recommend that Debian developers stick to gnome-terminal developers' choice. cheers, egmont -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#368916: gnome-terminal: $TERM should be set to gnome instead of xterm
Hey. On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 14:11 +0100, Egmont Koblinger wrote: I firmly disagree with Christoph's comment Apparently upstream intentionally breaks things or simply doesn't care. Well at least it was changed (as it was said in some other discussion) from properly announcing it as vte or something like that to some wrong value... so one could interpret this as intention ;) And that issues has been open for quite a while, with the fix being trivial, so since I didn't really assume bad faith on the upstream side, I concluded it must be lack of interest. We do care, and we worked hard recently to make gnome-terminal work reasonably close to xterm. Just look at the changelog and count how many emulation fixes we had in the last 1.5 years! Gnome-terminal has set TERM=xterm for a long time, and xterm is our reference as for how the terminal should work. I never said you'd be doing bad work in creating a terminal itself or making it close in behaviour to xterm, actually gnome-terminal/VTE is my favourite terminal emulator. But the idea of terminal names in terminfo is not that there is a common base set which all have to try to implement as closely as possible - and everything beyond that may just cause issues. Actually that's one of the basic ideas of terminfo to make terminals usable in an end-device independent manner. As soon as xterm would change something, gnome-terminal would be out of sync for at least a while, and this already assumes that perfect compatibility can be reached. And the other way round: Since some other terminal emulators choose to announce themselves as xterm it also makes life of the real XTerm much hard in that they probably must think twice before they could do a change to their terminal definitions, knowing that this would break with n other terminals. As I've mentioned in the discussions, I didn't get the opinion that the upstream of Xterm/ncruses/terminfo were particularly happy about that situation - but maybe I just misunderstood them. On the other hand, TERM=gnome, which is written and maintained (probably not maintained actively too much) by xterm/terminfo's maintainer, is probably way out of date. Hmm well that's another topic. But at least for the few things I tried now, gnome seemed to have produced better results. Without looking at the details, I'm quite sure that TERM=xterm is way closer to describe gnome-terminal's behavior than TERM=gnome. And even if someone updates and corrects the gnome terminal description, we'd have to wait years until it's deployed to most of the hosts where you'd want to ssh to. Well we had that very same discussion over at the GNOME bugzilla: The problem you describe isn't really much different from when you or anyone else use xterm. As soon as that changes it would also takes years to propagate. Sure it's not perfect, but incorrectly reporting blink support is probably a magnitudes smaller problem than the ones you'd face with TERM=gnome. Just out of curiosity, which problems are known? I run with gnome-256color for a while now and everything seems to run smoothly. *If* someone updates TERM=gnome and keeps it updated, changing to that as the default might become a viable option in maybe 5 years or so. Not sure how the responsibilities are laid out there, but shouldn't the upstream of each terminal emulator make sure to ship a proper definition or at least keep it updated over at ncurses/terminfo? Cheers, Chris. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Bug#368916: gnome-terminal: $TERM should be set to gnome instead of xterm
On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 14:23 +0100, Egmont Koblinger wrote: Having set the wrong TERM breaks all kinds of things and there is no real way to correct that (setting it in .bashrc or friends would do this for all terminals!). That's not quite true: you can check for $VTE_VERSION in your .bashrc. Sorry, I meant real in the sense of portable. Of course one can always find out somehow, and if by using ps(1), but I don't want to maintain a list of variable which dozens of terminal emulator set or set not, just to find out what's actually running. This is the job of terminfo, and if someone would write now another layer to correctly detect things because terminfo is fooled, it would likely just take a few years until that is als fooled by just setting these variables (just see how many browsers announce themselves as Mozilla ^^). Best wishes, Chris. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Bug#368916: gnome-terminal: $TERM should be set to gnome instead of xterm
Anything new here?
Apparently upstream intentionally breaks things or simply doesn't care.
So could Debian please fix things at least downstream?
The patch is trivial, and having tested it with all kinds of
applications, it seems to not cause breakage.
Having set the wrong TERM breaks all kinds of things and there is no
real way to correct that (setting it in .bashrc or friends would do this
for all terminals!).
Below is a list of differences between xterm and gnome and for
xterm-256color / gnome-256color things are not better.
Reporting the wrong terminal doesn't only lead to some features not
working, it also means that tests for features fail, e.g. tput blink
will exit 0 on gnome terminal, while it should exit 1 (since it doesn't
support blinking).
Further, I'd suggest that gnome-terminal sets TERM=gnome-256color
instead of just gnome.
It actually already supports full RGB colours so there's no reason to
restrict oneself.
Cheers,
Chris.
$ infocmp xterm gnome
comparing xterm to gnome.
comparing booleans.
km: T:F.
mc5i: T:F.
npc: T:F.
comparing numbers.
ncv: NULL, 16.
comparing strings.
blink: '\E[5m', NULL.
cbt: '\E[Z', NULL.
cnorm: '\E[?12l\E[?25h', '\E[?25h'.
cvvis: '\E[?12;25h', NULL.
el1: '\E[1K', NULL.
enacs: NULL, '\E)0'.
flash: '\E[?5h$100/\E[?5l', NULL.
ich: '\E[%p1%d@', NULL.
indn: '\E[%p1%dS', NULL.
is2: '\E[!p\E[?3;4l\E[4l\E',
'\E[m\E[?7h\E[4l\E\E7\E[r\E[?1;3;4;6l\E8'.
kb2: '\EOE', '\E[E'.
kent: '\EOM', NULL.
kf13: '\E[1;2P', '\EO1;2P'.
kf14: '\E[1;2Q', '\EO1;2Q'.
kf15: '\E[1;2R', '\EO1;2R'.
kf16: '\E[1;2S', '\EO1;2S'.
kf25: '\E[1;5P', '\EO1;5P'.
kf26: '\E[1;5Q', '\EO1;5Q'.
kf27: '\E[1;5R', '\EO1;5R'.
kf28: '\E[1;5S', '\EO1;5S'.
kf37: '\E[1;6P', '\EO1;6P'.
kf38: '\E[1;6Q', '\EO1;6Q'.
kf39: '\E[1;6R', '\EO1;6R'.
kf40: '\E[1;6S', '\EO1;6S'.
kf49: '\E[1;3P', '\EO1;3P'.
kf50: '\E[1;3Q', '\EO1;3Q'.
kf51: '\E[1;3R', '\EO1;3R'.
kf52: '\E[1;3S', '\EO1;3S'.
kf61: '\E[1;4P', '\EO1;4P'.
kf62: '\E[1;4Q', '\EO1;4Q'.
kf63: '\E[1;4R', '\EO1;4R'.
kfnd: NULL, '\E[1~'.
kslt: NULL, '\E[4~'.
mc0: '\E[i', NULL.
mc4: '\E[4i', NULL.
mc5: '\E[5i', NULL.
rin: '\E[%p1%dT', NULL.
rmacs: '\E(B', '^O'.
rmcup: '\E[?1049l', '\E[2J\E[?47l\E8'.
rmso: '\E[27m', '\E[m'.
rmul: '\E[24m', '\E[m'.
rs2: '\E[!p\E[?3;4l\E[4l\E',
'\E7\E[r\E8\E[m\E[?7h\E[!p\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l\E\E[?1000l\E[?25h'.
setb:
'\E[4%?%p1%{1}%=%t4%e%p1%{3}%=%t6%e%p1%{4}%=%t1%e%p1%{6}%=%t3%e%p1%d%;m', NULL.
setf:
'\E[3%?%p1%{1}%=%t4%e%p1%{3}%=%t6%e%p1%{4}%=%t1%e%p1%{6}%=%t3%e%p1%d%;m', NULL.
sgr:
'%?%p9%t\E(0%e\E(B%;\E[0%?%p6%t;1%;%?%p5%t;2%;%?%p2%t;4%;%?%p1%p3%|%t;7%;%?%p4%t;5%;%?%p7%t;8%;m',
'\E[0%?%p6%t;1%;%?%p2%t;4%;%?%p5%t;2%;%?%p7%t;8%;%?%p1%p3%|%t;7%;m%?%p9%t\016%e\017%;'.
sgr0: '\E(B\E[m', '\E[0m\017'.
smacs: '\E(0', '^N'.
smcup: '\E[?1049h', '\E7\E[?47h'.
u8: '\E[?1;2c', '\E[?%[;0123456789]c'.
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Bug#368916: gnome-terminal: $TERM should be set to gnome instead of xterm
tags 368916 + confirmed upstream tags 368916 - patch forwarded 368916 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115750 stop Hi, On Thu, May 25, 2006, James Vega wrote: Gnome-terminal incorrectly claims to be xterm-compatible in it's $TERM. This should instead be set to gnome, which is the proper termcap entry for gnome-terminal. The attached patch fixes the hard-coded TERM entry in gnome-terminal's source. Thanks for your report, I've linked the Debian bug to an upstream discussion (which you might want to subscribe to) on a similar topic. (I'm removing the patch keyword because I'd like upstream feedback.) Bye, -- Loïc Minier [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#368916: gnome-terminal: $TERM should be set to gnome instead of xterm
Package: gnome-terminal Version: 2.14.1-1 Severity: normal Tags: patch Gnome-terminal incorrectly claims to be xterm-compatible in it's $TERM. This should instead be set to gnome, which is the proper termcap entry for gnome-terminal. The attached patch fixes the hard-coded TERM entry in gnome-terminal's source. James -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (499, 'experimental') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.14-debil-3 Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Versions of packages gnome-terminal depends on: ii gnome-control-center 1:2.12.3-2 utilities to configure the GNOME d ii gnome-terminal-data 2.14.1-1Data files for the GNOME terminal ii libatk1.0-0 1.11.4-2The ATK accessibility toolkit ii libbonobo2-0 2.14.0-1Bonobo CORBA interfaces library ii libc62.3.6-9 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libgconf2-4 2.14.0-1GNOME configuration database syste ii libglade2-0 1:2.5.1-2 library to load .glade files at ru ii libglib2.0-0 2.10.2-2The GLib library of C routines ii libgnome2-0 2.14.1-2The GNOME 2 library - runtime file ii libgnomeui-0 2.14.1-1The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf ii libgnomevfs2-0 2.14.1-2GNOME virtual file-system (runtime ii libgtk2.0-0 2.8.17-2The GTK+ graphical user interface ii liborbit21:2.14.0-1 libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB ii libpango1.0-01.12.1-3Layout and rendering of internatio ii libpopt0 1.7-5 lib for parsing cmdline parameters ii libstartup-notification0 0.8-1 library for program launch feedbac ii libvte4 1:0.12.1-1 Terminal emulator widget for GTK+ ii libx11-6 2:1.0.0-6 X11 client-side library ii libxrender1 1:0.9.0.2-4 X Rendering Extension client libra ii scrollkeeper 0.3.14-11 A free electronic cataloging syste Versions of packages gnome-terminal recommends: pn yelp none (no description available) -- no debconf information diff -urN gnome-terminal-2.14.1.old/src/terminal-screen.c gnome-terminal-2.14.1/src/terminal-screen.c --- gnome-terminal-2.14.1.old/src/terminal-screen.c 2006-02-02 13:32:11.0 -0500 +++ gnome-terminal-2.14.1/src/terminal-screen.c 2006-05-25 17:59:28.0 -0400 @@ -,7 +,7 @@ retval[i] = g_strdup (COLORTERM=EXECUTABLE_NAME); ++i; - retval[i] = g_strdup (TERM=xterm); /* FIXME configurable later? */ + retval[i] = g_strdup (TERM=gnome); /* FIXME configurable later? */ ++i; retval[i] = g_strdup_printf (WINDOWID=%ld,
