Package: screen
Hi,
in Debian's /etc/screenrc some termcap/terminfo capabilities for xterm
are set (screen seems to always use termcap names in config files):
termcapinfo xterm*|rxvt*|kterm*|Eterm* hs:ts=\E]0;:fs=\007:ds=\E]0;\007
... and accordingly screen thinks that the terminal supports a hardstatus:
screen(1):
| ... if the terminal doesn't have a hardstatus line (i.e. the
^ missing comma
| termcap/terminfo capabilities "hs", "ts", "fs" and "ds" are not set).
... and therefore wrongly requires "hardstatus alwayslastline" to be
used instead of "hardstatus lastline":
screen(1):
| If you prepend the word "always" to the type (e.g., "alwayslastline"),
| screen will use the type even if the terminal supports a hardstatus.
... which confused Thomas Dickey, whilst he was trying to improve the
terminfo status line for screen-s:
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses/2014-11/msg00001.html>:
> ... Looking for clues in screen(1), I tried adding
> hardstatus lastline
>
> to my ~/.screenrc, but saw no difference.
People that do not know what a hardstatus is, would just have tried
alwayslastline and succeeded, but a terminfo upstream knows such things.
> So... what configuration details can you provide to help me test
> (and document) this change?
For testing purposes (if still relevant), you can also enable
hardstatus interactively:
- start screen (press enter if you see the copyright notice)
- press CTRL-a
- paste this into the terminal (without the leading spaces):
:hardstatus alwayslastline "%{= gk} .. oo OO"
- press return
Possible fixes for this bug:
1. Convince Thomas Dickey, or whoever is responsible for such things,
to add a new terminfo capability that indicates that the terminal
is able to set the window's titlebar. Then wait until screen and
other tools use this in a proper way ...
2. Disable this setting and confuse other Debian users that expect
this hack.
README.Debian suggests that people ask how to disable this and that
even the former Maintainer does not know any useful answer that does
not involve becoming root ('add "hardstatus alwaysmessage"' is as
useful as 'use tmux instead').
A feature people want to remove and that can not (easily) be
disabled in ~/.screenrc but can easily be enabled in ~/.screenrc
does not belong to the system wide screen rc file. Adding it to
a recommended ~/.screenrc for new users, if such a file ever will
exist, could be reasonable.
Carsten
