xterm/rxvt screen clearing / restoration

[Benjamin Low <ben@snrc.uow.edu.au>]

I'm running Debian 2.1, and have an annoying problem with xterm and rxvt
where often the screen fails to be restored properly after running
vi/vim/elvis/less/anything else which ordinarily restores the terminal
screen after exiting.

When I say 'fails to be restored', it's kind of like the current input
line is moved up the window, mixed in with the previous shell output.

I'm guessing this is a termcap issue - I don't know much about
termcap/terminfo stuff, but from the terminfo man page I see there's a
restore_cursor capability, amongst others. I've tried setting my TERM
variable to variations of xterm, xterm-debian, rxvt, etc, but without
success. 

Any suggestions?

Regards,

Ben Low