Re: PuTTY tips for Debian users
On Fri, 26 Sep 2014 09:53:44 -0400 (EDT), Jonathan Dowland wrote:
>
> I've enjoyed reading your well-written and thoroughly researched posts. Have
> you considered putting them somewhere else, e.g. the Debian wiki?
I'm not sure that the Debian wiki is the right place for this information.
Although there is a Linux port of PuTTY, 99% of PuTTY users are
Windows users, including me. Although it may be used to login remotely
to a Debian system, PuTTY itself is Windows software. And I'm not
sure that the Debian wiki is the place for making recommendations
for how to configure Windows software. I might write my own web
page about it and place it here:
http://users.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/index.htm
Some of my web pages, such as the kernel-building web page and
the lilo web page, have gained a measure of popularity.
>
> One point:
>
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 10:11:41PM -0400, Stephen Powell wrote:
>> One of the things I recommended was setting the terminal type string to
>> xterm-utf8.
>
> I asked myself "why"? Reading your original message, this is because this
> enables a) xterm window title strings and b) non-VT100 box drawing characters.
> So there's two plusses, but
>>
>> In particular, the "--color=auto" option of the "ls" command behaves
>> sub-optimally. In wheezy, some of the colors, such as red, don't display.
>> In an up-to-date jessie system, no color output occurs at all.
>
> One minus,
>>
>> The problem is that xterm-utf8 is not listed in the dircolors internal
>> database of terminal types that support color. It should be.
>
> Who says it should be? I don't mean to be combative, I just wonder who has
> authority over the definition of 'valid' TERM values. Where did xterm-utf8 come
> from? Which software specifically supports it? Evidently dircolors doesn't.
> From what I can tell, dircolors has it's own private database, but much other
> software uses 'terminfo', which in practice is part of ncurses nowadays.
> Looking at ncurses in sid, I see there is an xterm-utf8 definition there.
The PuTTY terminal type string used sets the TERM environment variable.
This is supposed to match a terminal type definition in ncurses. So the
xterm-utf8 terminal type definition in ncurses is the standard. If you issue
infocmp xterm-utf8
at a shell prompt, you see that the description for the terminal type is
xterm with no VT100 line-drawing in UTF-8 mode
which is exactly what we want. The output also shows that the terminal
supports color
colors#8
Therefore, xterm-utf8 should be in the list of terminal types which
support color in the dircolors database. Besides, actual practice
shows that that if you try to use color, it works.
Q.E.D.
>
> Is the fact putty can't handle vt100 line drawing characters in UTF8 mode
> a font problem perhaps? Would using a different font be a better solution?
No. This is a standards issue. It is the author's opinion (Simon G.
Tatham, the author of PuTTY, not me) that supporting VT100 box-drawing
escape sequences in UTF-8 mode is a standards violation, therefore, he
does not intend to add support for it. The "right" way to do this in
UTF-8 mode is to send the proper UTF-8 codes to produce the box-drawing
characters. See
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/utf8-plus-vt100.html
for more details.
>
> What results do you get if you try a different TERM value, such as
> xterm-256color? With that, at least, you'd have the benefit of 8 bit colour
> options too.
PuTTY currently does not support 256-color mode. See
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/256-colours.html
for more information.
--
.''`. Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>
: :' :
`. `'`
`-
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