Re: Suspending emacs on character terminals and "screen switching"

[Romain Francoise]

Casper Gripenberg <casper.gripenberg@kotiportti.fi> writes:

> Does anyone know what the terminal capability is that makes emacs
> switch back to the "shell screen" when you suspend emacs?

What you're seeing is called the "alternate screen", when TERM=xterm
Emacs draws its frame in the alternate screen, leaving the original
screen alone.  When TERM=vt100 then Emacs uses the original screen
buffer, which (as you've noticed) makes scrollback invisible.  The
corresponding termcap entries are 'ti' and 'te'.

A Google search for "xterm alternate screen" should return plenty of
relevant results.