[comp.emacs] Can emacs read the termcap?

david@WUBIOS.WUSTL.EDU (David J. Camp) (11/09/90)

Suppose that I use several different terminals in the course
of a day.  One might be a vt100, one a vt52, and one an adm3a.
I want to configure emacs to recognize special keys from those
terminals.  For example, when I am on the vt100, I want it to 
know about F1 through F4.  On the ADM3A, it must know that 
^H^J^K^L are labelled as arrow keys.

How can an .emacs configuration learn about the termcap
information for a terminal?  I suppose I could write a 
script that reads the TERM environment variable and
does conditional branching, but its seems more reasonable
to be able to access the termcap and terminfo information
directly from emacs.  

I am not sure about termcap, but ther terminfo database
allows me to identify the various special keys and identify
them by name to the application.  Thus the application can
make an detect an "up-arrow" key independant of the terminal
type.

If this has not already been done, I may be willing to do 
some work in this area.  -David-

david@wubios.wustl.edu             ^     Mr. David J. Camp
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