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

[Daan De Meyer]

I just tried vt241 and didn't get colorized output in konsole. I looked
around a bit and it doesn't really seem supported at all by terminal
emulators (or at least none that I found). I also tried TERM=xterm-256color
with 8 different terminal emulators and got colors with all of them. My
workflow is simply "mkosi qemu -nographic" (with a modified mkosi that adds
console=ttyS0 and overrides TERM for serial-getty at ttyS0 in the vm)." That
connects my terminal emulator to the serial console of the vm. I then
execute "ls -l --color /" in the vm and get colored output every time in
whatever terminal emulator that I try.

I'm probably missing something but I'm wondering what an example terminal
emulator would be where xterm-256color would not work at all (even st
worked perfectly and that is supposed to be pretty barebones afaik). Or is
it just that color is a commonly supported subset of xterm and stuff breaks
down with other escape codes instead? Or maybe qemu is doing some kind of
translation that magically makes every TERM setting work in whatever
terminal emulator I try? Apologies if this seems ignorant, I have no
experience at all with this domain.

Daan

On Tue, 14 Jul 2020 at 18:22, Christopher Cox <ccox at endlessnow.com> wrote:

> On 7/14/20 3:19 AM, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> > On Mo, 13.07.20 18:16, Christopher Cox (ccox at endlessnow.com) wrote:
> >
> >>> 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".
> >
> > Hmm, if vt241 is a bettre featured terminal type, and both xterm and
> > the Linux console a superset of it, and the terminal widely available
> > in termcaps and stuff we can certainly change our default TERM to be
> > vt241.
> >
> > Daan, if this all is the case, could you prep a PR?
>
> I would think shooting for something low is actually good.  Let the
> individual
> configure for something "better".
>
> I'm not sure I'm ready to say monochrome is obsolete.  There can be beauty
> in
> simplicity and function.  My preference, aim low, and allow easy
> configuration
> upward.  You could take the opposite stance of course, it's just that it
> could
> cause some frustration.
>
> Just my opinion though.  I'm old and I think about a lot of things like
> terminals, "proxies" and callback modems... things of value, but most do
> not
> understand or care about anymore.
>
>
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