[gnu.emacs.bug] bad error message

sobalvarro@ARISIA.XEROX.COM (Patrick Sobalvarro) (06/20/89)

If I log in to a Unix where something has set the environment variables TERM
or TERMCAP to some bogus value, like "network" or "dumb", then if I do

% set term=vt100   #for example,

then when I try to start up Emacs it says

emacs: Terminal type "vt100" is not powerful enough to run Emacs.
It lacks the ability to position the cursor.
If that is not the actual type of terminal you have,
use the C-shell command `setenv TERM ...' to specify the correct type.
It may be necessary to do `unsetenv TERMCAP' as well.

But this error message is simply wrong.  Terminal type "vt100" is certainly
powerful enough, etc.  If Emacs is looking at the TERM environment variable,
it should report that setting, and not the shell variable's setting, in its
error message.