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Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text?

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  Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2021-05-31 15:50 +0200
    Re: Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2021-05-31 16:00 +0200
    Re: Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2021-05-31 16:00 +0200
    Re: Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2021-05-31 16:10 +0200
    Re: Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2021-06-01 03:40 +0200
      Re: Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-06-01 03:50 +0200
        Re: Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2021-06-01 04:30 +0200
        Re: Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2021-06-01 15:00 +0200
        Re: Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2021-06-01 16:50 +0200
        Re: Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2021-06-01 16:10 +0200
          Re: Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-06-01 16:30 +0200

#235739 — Coerce "MATE terminal" to display black on white text?

The MATE terminal "Help"(sic) claims VT102 emulation but does not say 
how to obtain it.
IIRC the VT100 series were *physically* a B&W display.
Web search gives no useful information.
Help please.
TIA

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#235740

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On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 08:41:37AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> The MATE terminal "Help"(sic) claims VT102 emulation but does not
> say how to obtain it.
> IIRC the VT100 series were *physically* a B&W display.
> Web search gives no useful information.

The "VT102" emulation refers to compatibility wrt escape sequences
(basically some variation of ANSI), not to the appearance.

Anyway, VT100 [1] was most probably dark background by default; that
said, you probably could change it. Perhaps there's even an ANSI
escape sequence for this, but it, uh... escapes me currently ;-)

I'm sure there is a way to configure MATE terminal's colours to
your heart's content (me? I'm an Xterm fanboi ;-)

Have a look at this [2], it seems promising. Search for "Customize
Terminal" [3].

Cheers

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT100
[2] https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-mate-customization/
[3] People can't be bothered to introduce anchors
   in their web pages. Sigh.

 - tomás

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#235741

	Hi.

On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 08:41:37AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> The MATE terminal "Help"(sic) claims VT102 emulation but does not say how to obtain it.

That's because it's unified with other terminal emulators.
You need TERM environment variable set to vt102 as per term(7).

If using bash it is:

export TERM=vt102

Reco

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#235746

On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 08:41:37AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> The MATE terminal "Help"(sic) claims VT102 emulation but does not say how to
> obtain it.
> IIRC the VT100 series were *physically* a B&W display.
> Web search gives no useful information.
> Help please.
> TIA
> 
> 

MATE terminal is a fork of GNOME terminal from earlier days.

Using a search engine to search for Mate colors customisation led me here:

https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-mate-customization/ which suggests

Open the terminal

Go to the Edit menu

Select Profile Preferences - which will allow you to change palette colours.

If you really want black and white - switching away from the GUI and back using 
ALt-[Functionkey] will give you full screen black and white, of course, for
at least six full screens worth. [Not something I do routinely these days, but 
I often did this on a real server in front of me to run multiple processes / 
tail logs / perform CD writes or whatever in the background].

I only saw late DEC terminals and mostly Wyse DEC compatible terminals - as I
recall, most were either green text on black background or orange on amber 
background. A pure mono 80x24 screen would be nice h but you'd need decent 
contrast.

VT100 compatible escape sequences (which now allow you to set colours for 
prompts instead of blinking/inverse video) which is what every terminal 
emulator has advertised ever since you needed to _emulate_ a physical 
serial-connected hardware terminal, that's another thing, of course 
[When did you last use a vertical tab? Anyone? ].

As ever, Google [or DuckDuckGo or whatever] is your friend and a small amount
of personal research can save a lot of time, especially when the fault is 
seemingly intractable but you can tell other people clearly "I've already
tried the following. It didn't work and I've reverted the changes" or 
whatever.

Hope this helps, all best as ever,

Andy C.

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#235756

Richard Owlett wrote:
> The MATE terminal "Help"(sic) claims VT102 emulation but does not say 
> how to obtain it.

  i'd put in my .bashrc the line:

  TERM="vt102" && export TERM


> IIRC the VT100 series were *physically* a B&W display.

  no, phosphors were white, green and amber.


  songbird

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#235757

On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 07:30:42PM -0400, songbird wrote:
> Richard Owlett wrote:
> > The MATE terminal "Help"(sic) claims VT102 emulation but does not say 
> > how to obtain it.
> 
>   i'd put in my .bashrc the line:
> 
>   TERM="vt102" && export TERM

That's unwise.  It'll screw you up *hard* any time you're not using
the terminal you normally use -- e.g. on ssh logins, or if you want to
test another terminal, or if you use tmux or screen, etc.

> > IIRC the VT100 series were *physically* a B&W display.
> 
>   no, phosphors were white, green and amber.

He probably meant monochrome.

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#235758

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 07:30:42PM -0400, songbird wrote:
>> Richard Owlett wrote:
>> > The MATE terminal "Help"(sic) claims VT102 emulation but does not say 
>> > how to obtain it.
>> 
>>   i'd put in my .bashrc the line:
>> 
>>   TERM="vt102" && export TERM
>
> That's unwise.  It'll screw you up *hard* any time you're not using
> the terminal you normally use -- e.g. on ssh logins, or if you want to
> test another terminal, or if you use tmux or screen, etc.

  i actually set some terminals by which /dev/pts they are and
who is logged in.


  songbird

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#235769

On 05/31/2021 08:49 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 07:30:42PM -0400, songbird wrote:
>> Richard Owlett wrote:
>>> The MATE terminal "Help"(sic) claims VT102 emulation but does not say
>>> how to obtain it.
>>
>>    i'd put in my .bashrc the line:
>>
>>    TERM="vt102" && export TERM
> 
> That's unwise.  It'll screw you up *hard* any time you're not using
> the terminal you normally use -- e.g. on ssh logins, or if you want to
> test another terminal, or if you use tmux or screen, etc.

The MATE terminal allows you chose from multiple "profiles".
One parameter is which emulator is used - though labeled "palette" ;/

> 
>>> IIRC the VT100 series were *physically* a B&W display.
>>
>>    no, phosphors were white, green and amber.
> 
> He probably meant monochrome.

When I was a T.V. service tech back in '62, *EVERYBODY* referred to 
"black and white televisions".

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#235780

	Hi.

On Tue, Jun 01, 2021 at 10:21:42AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> (I am not aware of any method of overriding TERM on a per-host basis
> in .ssh/config but if such a method *does* exist, it would be far better
> than this shell function hack.)

There's a hack, but it's not pretty, and it has its share of limitations:

Host server
  Hostname server
  RemoteCommand TERM=xterm $SHELL
  RequestTTY yes

A proper solution - [1] is kind-of sort-of made its way to the upstream,
but it's not included in Debian yet.

[1] https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable/pull/224

Reco

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#235781

	Hi.

On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 09:49:36PM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 07:30:42PM -0400, songbird wrote:
> > Richard Owlett wrote:
> > > The MATE terminal "Help"(sic) claims VT102 emulation but does not say 
> > > how to obtain it.
> > 
> >   i'd put in my .bashrc the line:
> > 
> >   TERM="vt102" && export TERM
> 
> That's unwise.  It'll screw you up *hard* any time you're not using
> the terminal you normally use -- e.g. on ssh logins, or if you want to
> test another terminal, or if you use tmux or screen, etc.

In my experience, one will be screwed much more by using TERM=screen or
TERM=tmux in conjunction with ssh.
Simply because the ssh target does not necessary have an appropriate
termcap for screen or tmux (say, Solaris 10 which I have to deal on a
weekly basis, and yes, I know I can copy termcap entries there).
And if you think that Linux is somehow better here - try
TERM=screen-256color in conjunction with RHEL5 :)

On the other hand, vt102 and xterm - even HP-UX knows about them.

Reco

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#235788

On Tue, Jun 01, 2021 at 05:04:38PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 09:49:36PM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 07:30:42PM -0400, songbird wrote:
> > > Richard Owlett wrote:
> > > > The MATE terminal "Help"(sic) claims VT102 emulation but does not say 
> > > > how to obtain it.
> > > 
> > >   i'd put in my .bashrc the line:
> > > 
> > >   TERM="vt102" && export TERM
> > 
> > That's unwise.  It'll screw you up *hard* any time you're not using
> > the terminal you normally use -- e.g. on ssh logins, or if you want to
> > test another terminal, or if you use tmux or screen, etc.
> 
> In my experience, one will be screwed much more by using TERM=screen or
> TERM=tmux in conjunction with ssh.
> Simply because the ssh target does not necessary have an appropriate
> termcap for screen or tmux (say, Solaris 10 which I have to deal on a
> weekly basis, and yes, I know I can copy termcap entries there).
> And if you think that Linux is somehow better here - try
> TERM=screen-256color in conjunction with RHEL5 :)
> 
> On the other hand, vt102 and xterm - even HP-UX knows about them.

You can install new terminfo entries on your RHEL and HP-UX hosts, for
terminals which you will be using frequently.

On the client (or any system with a matching terminfo entry), use
"infocmp terminalname" to generate the "source code" for a terminfo entry.
Save that to a file on the target, and run "tic filename" to compile it.
If you do this as root, it becomes available system-wide.  If you do it
as yourself, it goes into your HOME directory, and only works for you.

This is probably a better long-term solution to your issues than
intentionally crippling (or full-out breaking) all of your local terminals.

If you don't like that workaround, you can always run "TERM=vt102" or
whatever *on the remote system* after ssh-ing in.  There's no reason to
do it on the client, let alone permanently in .bashrc for every terminal
you open on the client.

If you don't like *that*, you could arrange for your ssh commands to
carry the bogus TERM value, using a shell function or alias.  For example,
in bash:

ssh() {
    case "${!#}" in
	mercury | *@mercury) TERM=vt102 command ssh "$@";;
	venus | *@venus)     TERM=vt220 command ssh "$@";;
	*)                   command ssh "$@";;
    esac
}

This relies on the remote target's hostname being the last argument of
your ssh command, with or without a leading username@ prefix.  Adjust
as needed.

(I am not aware of any method of overriding TERM on a per-host basis
in .ssh/config but if such a method *does* exist, it would be far better
than this shell function hack.)

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