Comment 16 for bug 96676

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Micah Cowan (micahcowan) wrote : Re: [feisty] function keys don't work in gnome-terminal

«Micah, since the purpose of terminfo is to recognize what xterm does, it seems to me that suggesting that xterm should follow what terminfo says it does is putting the cart before the horse. terminfo doesn't describe what xterm should do, it (should) describe what xterm *does*.»

Xterm does, in fact, do what terminfo says. That was my whole point.

There is also, additionally, functionality that xterm does, that is not (and cannot currently be, and has not ever been) described by terminfo. This includes the control-<special key> stuff.

None of MC, vim, nor irssi rely on ncurses to tell them anything about when a function key *plus modifier* has been hit, because, as I've said, ncurses is not capable of telling them this. In the case of vim, at least, vim specifically checks the TERM variable to see if it's an xterm or xterm-clone, and in that case listens for specific control sequences (that are not, and cannot currently be, tracked by terminfo). Again, see bug 89660.

Regardless of whether xterm changed relatively recently, which I haven't had a chance to confirm yet; gnome-terminal has definitely changed in a way that breaks with any sequence xterm has used, either past or present.