From: Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de>
Subject: Re: wscons 256 colour support
To: Theo de Raadt <deraadt@openbsd.org>
Cc: Mark Kettenis <mark.kettenis@xs4all.nl>, tech@openbsd.org
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2025 19:41:08 +0200

Hello,

Theo de Raadt wrote on Sat, Jun 28, 2025 at 11:04:29AM -0600:

> As I see it the problem is different:
> People now run with TERM=xterm by default,

Do they?

I just checked what happens for me.

When i start an xterm(1), i get:

   $ echo $TERM
  xterm

Normally, i'm using st(1) nowadays, and there, i get

   $ echo $TERM
  st-256color

At the console, i get

   $ echo $TERM
  vt220

I do not recall configuring any of that by hand, so the defaults
seem sane to me.  I'm not sure how "people" might end up
with TERM=xterm at the console "by default".

> so all the worries you describe are already occuring.
> There will be misbehaviours, already.

Only for people explicitly lying "TERM=xterm" to their console,
i guess?

> I said "minimal xterm", for a reason.  Surely an intentional minimal
> xterm model is doable, considering people are using xterm against the
> codebase already.

Good point, that should indeed be possible.

I'm unsure though whether it will improve user experience.
For people already setting TERM=xterm at the console now, likely
yes, for them, it can hardly make matters worse.

But for users relying on the default setting of TERM=vt220 now,
switching the default to TERM=xterm may possibly cause some
fallout, because that may encourage part of the software they are
running at the console to use xterm(1) features that we intentionally
will not support, possibly causing breakage, which may not occur
with TERM=vt220.  Not sure how widespread or serious that will be,
maybe not very.

Yours,
  Ingo