Re: Display problem

[Kyle Wheeler <kyle-mutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Well, the thing we're aiming for is to find a way to get all of your 
various software pieces to agree on a configuration that works. This 
is made more difficult by several things. It probably helps if you 
think of the layers that you're working with here.

When mutt wishes to display something, it uses ncurses (or slang, 
depending on how you've compiled mutt). Ncurses must then send the 
sequence of bytes necessary to display what mutt wants to the 
terminal. Since there is no terminal, ssh intercepts this output, and 
forwards it to your remote application.

Each terminal (application) has different capabilities (such as being 
able to draw lines or being able to draw colors or scroll portions of 
the terminal or what have you), and different byte sequences for 
telling it to do these things. This is why we have ncurses (and 
slang): so that mutt doesn't need to know about every dang terminal in 
existence. Unfortunately, that means that ncurses must know about 
every dang terminal in existence, or at least, it must know about the 
terminal that *you're* using (and the only way it knows this is from 
the TERM setting). People writing new terminal applications (e.g. 
putty) know this, and while they like adding features, generally they 
want their terminal to work sooner than later, so they tend to emulate 
older terminals (e.g. xterm). Now, throw into this mix possibly buggy 
ncurses terminal definitions (it happens), buggy terminals, buggy 
emulations... Oh, and just for grins, let's also throw in the 
possibility (nay, likelihood) of fonts that don't support all the 
necessary characters, and it can get darn hard to figure out why 
something doesn't display properly! :)

On Wednesday, November 28 at 10:05 AM, quoth Steve:
>> Now, I *think* (and you'd have to dig into the Konsole 
>> documentation) that the correct TERM setting for it is 
>> "xterm-color" (because it's emulating an xterm), though there may 
>> be a more accurate setting (check the Konsole docs).
>
> I tried to
>
> export TERM=xterm-color
>
> but the problem arised again.

Well, then, chances are xterm-color isn't correct for your version of 
Konsole. Hmm. Try export TERM=kterm, maybe that'll work. Or even 
TERM=konsole. Konsole may have configurable emulation modes... I don't 
use it, so I'll let you investigate.

>> The correct setting for when you're using putty depends on what 
>> putty is emulating; check into putty's configuration, and set it to 
>> something useful. It's probably emulating a VT100 terminal, and you 
>> want it to emulate something a little more capable, like an xterm.
>
> In putty, Connection -> Data is currently set to xterm. I tried several 
> different values found in the litterature (uxterm, putty, linuxi ..) and 
> still the same problem..

Changing the setting in Connection->Data only changes what PuTTy 
*claims* to be, not what it actually behaves like (don't you love how 
those are separate settings?). For example, in Window->Translation, 
you can adjust how Putty handles line-drawing characters, in 
Window->Colours you get to change whether it supports 256 colors or 
not, and so forth. Whatever you do, you need to alter your TERM 
variable to reflect whatever it is that you've told Putty to behave 
like (e.g. if you've told it to behave just like xterm with 256 color 
support, TERM should be xterm-256color (or a subset of that, such as 
xterm-16color)). TERM doesn't change just because PuTTy changes how it 
operates, it is (unfortunately) manual.

In some cases, depending on your version of ncurses, I've heard that 
setting TERM to putty-vt100, putty, or putty-256color (in ascending 
order of complexity (i.e. if putty doesn't work, then putty-vt100 
might work, but if 'putty' doesn't work at all, putty-256color is 
unlikely to work)).

Unfortunately, because what terminals are supported by ncurses depends 
heavily on your particular version, and how a terminal (mis)behaves is 
also dependent on the version of the terminal, I can't give you a 100% 
guaranteed answer. But I say play around with your TERM setting and 
see if you can't get one that behaves itself.

>> Setting your TERM variable depends on what shell you're using, but to 
>> test the setting regardless of shell, use this:
>> 
>>      env TERM=xterm mutt
>
> Also tried this and .. shoul I precise?

I don't understand the question.

Hope that helps,
~Kyle
- -- 
You never truly understand a thing until you can explain it to your 
grandmother.
                                                     -- Albert Einstein
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