On Tue, Apr 03, 2018 at 05:19:27PM -0600, Grant Taylor wrote

> "mtr", "vim", and "less" all three use what Xterm calls the "Alternate 
> Screen".  You can see this while the programs are running by looking at 
> the VT Options menu (Ctrl+Middle Click) and seeing that the "Show 
> Alternate Screen" is checked.

  The option was checked.  I unchecked it, and now less/mtr/vim do not
clear the screen on exit.  YAAAAY!!!  So why has the default changed,
and how can I get xterm to come up with alternate screen disabled?

> There may be a way to disable the "Alternate Screen", but I don't know 
> for sure, muchless what it would be.  I'd suggest Reading the ""Fine 
> Manpage.  (Or at least searching said manpage.)

  TFM says to use "titeInhibit"

> 
> >   A long time ago I ran into this problem and was advised to add 
> > "XTerm*titeInhibit: true" in .Xresources.  It seems to have stopped 
> > working recently.  Last night on a web forum people were comparing 
> > response times from 1.1.1.1 DNS server.  I ran "mtr" in xterm but the 
> > output would disapper entirely when I hit "q".  I managed to freeze the 
> > output with {CTRL}{S} so I could do a copy/paste into a post.  But I'd 
> > like a clean solution rather than a clunky workaround.
> 
> I would be shocked to learn that a title (bar?) related setting would 
> have anything to do with the "Alternate Screen".  -  If this worked, I'm 
> guessing that it did so by breaking something else that would trigger 
> the "Alternate Screen".  (There's a 1000% chance that I'm wrong here.)

  That's "titeInhibit" (nothing to do with title).  See
https://www.x.org/archive/X11R6.7.0/doc/xterm.1.html

> titeInhibit (class TiteInhibit)
>     Specifies whether or not xterm should remove ti and te termcap
>     entries (used to switch between alternate screens on startup of
>     many screen-oriented programs) from the TERMCAP string. If set,
>     xterm also ignores the escape sequence to switch to the alternate
>     screen. Xterm supports terminfo in a different way, supporting
>     composite control sequences (also known as private modes) 1047,
>     1048 and 1049 which have the same effect as the original 47
>     control sequence. The default for this resource is ``false.''

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltd...@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

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