AW: modifying terminfo via termcapinfo

[Joahnn Gile]

> You seem to be misunderstanding the purpose of termcapinfo. Its purpose
> is not to modify actual termcap or terminfo entries, in particular the
> ones that other applications might see and modify behavior for... its
> purpose is to edit _screen's_ interpretation of those entries, to modify
> _screen's_ behavior regarding them. A common use, for instance, is to
> make screen think that the host terminal doesn't have a "ti" entry, so
> that it won't use the alternate buffer.
> 
> Not only does screen not alter actual terminfo descriptions (which are
> always represented by physical files on the system), but it would be
> evil for it to do so. ...I suppose that new terminfo descriptions could
> be written to a temporary location, and set TERMINFO, but that quickly
> gets expensive. The best way to do what you want, would be to create the
> proper terminfo descriptions yourself using the usual means: modifying
> the output of infocmp and compiling it with tic.

Well the actual terminfo entry is included in ncurses, screen-256color-bce-s, 
however I am looking for a workaround as it cannot be set within screenrc due 
to bug http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=491812

> All that being said, I'm surprised then if TERMCAP gets modified by
> termcapinfo commands. It's not clear to me whether that's intentional or
> unintentional... certainly TERMCAP provides a means for programs to
> modify termcap entries without being evil; perhaps termcap was intended
> to serve for both purposes (screen's and applications'), but it was
> realized they couldn't treat terminfo the same way, so they simply didn't.

Well that is what lead me to think that it would create a temporary terminfo 
entry as well.