[ILUG] Stop vi clearing screen on exit

[Conor Daly]

On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 01:56:34PM +0100 or thereabouts, Colm Buckley wrote:
> 
> On Wednesday 16 May 2001 13:34, you wrote:
> 
> > A colleague is complaining that when he exits vi(m), it clears the screen
> > so he can't see what he was viewing.  What can he set in his .exrc to
> > prevent that?
> 
> It's not so much that vi clears the screen as that it, in common with
> almost all curses-based progams, uses the "alternate screen"
> capability of most terminal emulators (xterm, in particular) - this is
> a separate screen buffer which a program can switch back and forth to.
> 
> If you're using xterm, there's an option on the ctrl-button2 menu
> called "Show Alternate Screen" which should display the alternate
> screen as used by vi.  If you don't want this functionality at all,
> you could put:
> 
> xterm*titeInhibit: true
> 
> in your ~/.Xresources (or possibly ~/.Xdefaults, depending on your
> window manager scripts) file to disable the "alternate screen"
> behaviour in xterm. (and xrdb -merge < ~/.Xresources to load 
> 
> If it's not xterm, what is it?

That's the baby alright.  When I unselect "Enable Alternate Screen Switching" 
in an xterm, the behaviour goes away.  However, it doesn't stay away.  I
don't have a .Xresources or .Xdefaults  I do have a .screenrc with stuff on
the form

termcapinfo xterm 'VR=\E[?5h:VN=\E[?5l'

We're also dealing with gnome-terminal here.  Can't find anything for that!

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly 
Met Eireann, Glasnevin Hill, Dublin 9, Ireland
Ph +353 1 8064217 Fax +353 1 8064275
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