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From: igp@camcon.co.uk (Ian Phillipps)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: How Sun's vi tells the window size
Keywords: xterm vi
Message-ID: <4056@titan.camcon.co.uk>
Date: 12 Oct 89 10:56:20 GMT
References: <253@zeek.UUCP> <17994@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Cambridge Consultants Ltd., Cambridge, UK
Lines: 21
Followups-To: alt.sys.sun

I apologise that this has little to do with X, but there have been some
offbeam comments about how vi tells window sizes on Suns.  I must admit we
don't have source to vi here, but the info in termcap(3) is pretty
explicit:

     Tgetent extracts the entry for terminal  name  into  the  bp
     buffer, with the current size of the tty (usually a window).
     This allows pre-SunWindows programs to run in  a  window  of
     arbitrary  size.

I.e. tgetent is kludged, so that all programs using it, or curses, will
know what size window they started out with.
The :co and :li numbers are ignored, so don't have to be changed. They usually
say 34x80, which is the default startup size (and the size of the boot-time
sun screen).

BTW, One of the upgrades promised for SVR4 is a vi that knows about SIGWINCH.
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