Re: Cursor shape with ncurses programs gets reset

[Micah Cowan]

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Dave Wood wrote:
> I have a flashing block cursor set up because I find it very hard to see
> the normal _ underline cursor - expecially when searching through man
> pages etc.
> 
> The problem comes when I run ncurses programs in screen. The cursor gets
> reset to underline whenever I run those programs in screen.
> 
> Does anyone know a way around this? I have set up custom terminfo files
> with tic. Would there be a setting that would affect ncurses programs
> perhaps?

Probably. I don't really know of an easy way to track down the source of
the problem, though. If I had to track it down, I'd probably run screen
under script, and isolate what series of control sequences was sent that
changed the cursor. GNU Teseq might possibly help with that, as it can
convert escape sequences to/from human-editable text.

If you do this, you'll probably want to use the ti@:te@ trick to prevent
 screen from using any alternate buffer your terminal may provide, which
might make debugging troublesome (of course, it might be part of the
reproduction steps, too...).

Things'll be much easier if you manage to find someone who knows what
sorts of things might change your cursor in your terminal. If it mostly
just happens in ncurses, you might try tweaking your "altscreen" setting
in your .screenrc, or checking what your screen terminfo says to send on
smcup or smkx (out of curiosity, what _does_ it say for those? for
screen and your host term type?)

- --
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer.
GNU Maintainer: wget, screen, teseq
http://micah.cowan.name/
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