Chapter 8. The Terminal Setup
Prev |  | Next

## Chapter 8. The Terminal Setup

ELinks uses neither (n)curses nor termcap/terminfo, so unless you are using a terminal that is known by ELinks and have a built-in configuration (see below for a list), it might be required that you do a little configuring of how your terminal should be handled. The easiest way to do this is by using the Terminal Options dialog located in the Setup submenu of the Main menu.

It is possible to have configurations for multiple terminals as long as the TERM environment variable — used to distinguish terminals from one another — is set to something different for each terminal. So be sure to set TERM to different values for two terminals that cannot share the same configuration. For example, always setting TERM to xterm-color can lead to problems if you run ELinks under the Linux console. This is because the Linux console does not support underlining and ELinks will not know that underlined characters will have to be color highlighted so they stand out.

In short, ELinks does not use termcap or terminfo. ELinks uses $TERM, but only to distinguish between terminals in its own configuration. That is, you need only configure your terminal within ELinks: Go to the Setup menu and select Terminal Options. If $TERM is set to screen when you configure ELinks' terminal settings, ELinks will remember to use those settings when $TERM is screen.

## Options

Apart from the last charset option configurable through the Setup -> Character Set submenu in the Main menu, the rest can be configured using the Terminal Options dialog.

### Terminal type

It maps roughly to the terminal type, such as Linux console, XTerm, VT100 etc. It matters mostly when drawing frames and borders around dialog windows. As already mentioned, it also turns on certain features which try to compensate for “missing” terminal capabilities when drawing. Special highlighting of underlined text if underlining is not supported is one such thing.

Type | Notes
--- | ---
No frames | Dumb terminal type / ASCII art
VT 100 frames | Works in most terminals
Linux or OS/2 frames | Linux console / you get double frames and other goodies
KOI-8 |
FreeBSD | FreeBSD console

The default is to assume dumb terminal/ASCII art.

### Color mode

The color mode controls what colors are used and how they are output to the terminal. The available color modes are:

Mode | Color codes
--- | ---
Mono mode | Only 2 colors are used
16 color mode | Uses the common ANSI colors
88 color mode | Uses XTerm RGB codes (if compiled in)
256 color mode | Uses XTerm RGB codes (if compiled in)

The default is to use mono mode.

### Switch fonts for line drawing (aka 11m hack)

This is related to the drawing of frames and window borders controlled by the option above. It controls whether to switch fonts when drawing lines, enabling both local characters and lines working at the same time.

This boolean option only makes sense with the Linux console. Off by default.

### Restrict frames in cp850/852

This is related to the drawing of frames and window borders controlled by the option above. If enabled, it restricts the characters used when drawing lines.

This boolean option only makes sense with the Linux console using the cp850/852 character sets. Off by default.

### Block cursor

Move cursor to the bottom right corner when done drawing, if possible. This is particularly useful when we have a block cursor, so that text colors are displayed correctly. If you are using a screen reader you do not want to enable this since the cursor is strategically positioned near relevant text of selected dialog elements.

This boolean option is off by default.

### Transparency

Determines whether or not to set the background to black. This is particularly useful when using a terminal (typically in some windowing environment) with a background image or a transparent background. If this option is enabled the background will be visible in ELinks as well.

Note that this boolean option makes sense only when colors are enabled. On by default.

### Text underlining capability

This boolean option controls whether to underline text or instead, enhance the color.

Note: not all terminals support text underlining, so it is off by default.

### UTF-8 I/O

This boolean option controls outputting of I/O in UTF-8 for Unicode terminals.

Note that currently, only a subset of UTF-8 according to the terminal codepage is used. This is off by default.

### Character Set

Codepage of the charset used for displaying content on terminal.

The value System (which is the default) will set the charset according to the current locale. The default is to use the charset of the current locale.

Prev |  | Next
Alternative URI rewriting mechanisms | Home | Terminal Configurations