[systemd-devel] vt220 default for serial console still relevant?

[Christopher Cox]

On 7/13/20 4:08 PM, Barry wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 11 Jul 2020, at 20:31, Daan De Meyer <daan.j.demeyer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 
>> > TERM=linux means Linux console, but that's just too much, as it not
>> > only implies a multitude of ESC sequences specific to the Linux
>> > console, but also indicates that certain ioctls might work. In our own
>> > code we also bind certain behaviour to TERM=linux, as indicator if we
>> > are on the Linux console.
>> >
>> > I am not aware of any widely-supported TERM value that would be a
>> > reasonable subset of all currently used terminals and does color.
>>
>> I did some more research and it turns out VT220 does support colors. My 
>> terminal emulator (Konsole) just doesn't seem to support it. I installed xterm 
>> (which explicitly advertises support for VT220 escape codes) and got colored 
>> output as expected.  I guess this means it's up to Konsole to support more of 
>> VT220 if I want this to work seamlessly (or I switch terminals to xterm).
>>
> 
> No vt220 does not support colour. I used to work on one and it is monochrome 
> hardware.
> Xterm and konsole support extensions beyond vt220 that add in the colour support.

Not sure how much (offtopic) history we want to get into.  I used the VT240 in 
my college graphics class.  The VT241 was the color variant.

See: http://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/DEC_VT240

I still meet programmers what hard code ansi sequences rather than querying 
termcap/terminfo.  You know what they say about those who "assume".