Questions on termcap suggestions

[Dan Mahoney, System Admin]

Hey all,

Apologies.  Long.  Late.  (Early).

I just spent a few hours longer than I feel I should have had to learning 
about ANSI escape sequences and the raw unadulterated line-noise-like 
readability of the system termcap file.

Here's the basics: I use pine's "print" command, which works fine, under a 
normal login (term type is vt100).

Then I started with screen, which ignores the escape sequences pine sends 
and does not pass them on to the remote terminal.

After a little research, I found the escape sequences for printer 
enableing and disabling, and I added the following to the termcap entry 
for "vt100" and rebuilt the thing:

po=\E[5i:pf=\E[4i:

And once I restarted screen, it worked.

I'm sending this through so someone may find it in the future and save 
themself some effort.

Now, I'm pretty sure those termcap entries are standard things, so I dunno 
if I can just throw in a send-pr to have them added (if I should, let me 
know, and I will).  Otherwise, is there a sensible way to suggest this be 
added somewhere else?  I mean, I don't want to set the assumption that ANY 
terminal setting itself as vt100 is in fact print-capable.  (but then, 
pine without screen will do the same damage anyway).

I'd say half the problem is in pine, honestly, which never *should* have 
worked without those entries present, but pine apparently doesn't check, 
instead just sending those sequences on its own.

Related:  In searching around I've also found a teeny tiny little program 
called lpansi that allows you to cat a file to your local printer. 
Shouldn't something like this be in the base, or in ports?  I found things 
like birthstone references and what certain flowers mean in 
/usr/share/misc, why not a useful "print" command?

-Dan

--

"You're a thucking reyer!"

-Richard Bozzello, who believed tongue piercing was painless.

--------Dan Mahoney--------
Techie,  Sysadmin,  WebGeek
Gushi on efnet/undernet IRC
ICQ: 13735144   AIM: LarpGM
Site:  http://www.gushi.org
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