[Tutor] python ncurses vs OS X Tiger's xterms.

[Alan Gauld]

> On Fri, Oct 14, 2005, Alan Gauld wrote:
>>Bill this is a guess but try setting the terminal type to vt220
>>or vt330 or similar rather than xterm. Does that make any difference?
> 
> I haven't tried fiddling the terminal type, and would prefer not
> to unless it's the last resort.

The reason I suggested oit is that its one of the things thats platform 
dependant and so setting a standard terminal setting on all platforms 
might show up the differences. In particular the Apple Terminal 
program versus xterm, but even an xterm can be defined difeerently 
on different Unix flavours.

This is one reason I have a line in my profile/cshrc files to force term 
type to v220, it just makes life more consistent...

> The ncurses libraries support termcap, but I think that all
> current versions of curses use terminfo which has many more

termcap or terminfo the point was that the beghaviour is not really 
in curses but in the terminal definitions stored in those databases.
Of course curses tries hard to hide those differences but ultimately 
is only as capable as the capabilities that have been defined.

> I suspect that the problem is more related to keyboard mappings
> in the Apple X11 implementation than it does with the terminfo
> and terminal type settings as the same applications work fine

As a matter of interest what does trhe apple Terminal and xterm 
claim the terninal type to be? (I should just go downstairs and 
boot my iBook! :-)

> there is something I can handle in my python ncurses routines
> than if I have to dig into the keyboard mapping stuff.

Absolutely and curses is supposede to do that, but when debugging 
curses(*) I've found it useful top know exactly what terminal curses 
thinks its playing with.

(*)And I mean curses I've never used ncurses in anger...

Alan G.