11.4 Display Attributes

When making entries to termset, keep in mind that on many terminals a display attribute takes up a space on the screen. If this is so, be sure that the appropriate attributes are correctly defined. Failure to do so may cause fields to be incorrectly displayed.

None of the programs that use the terminal escape sequences expect the display attributes to take up a position on the terminal screen. If the terminal does not have any display attributes, the display attribute escape sequences can be used to put a pair of special characters in the positions which are adjacent to the field instead. For example, the START REVERSE VIDEO FIELD escape sequence could be defined as:

BS [

and the END REVERSE VIDEO FIELD definition could be:

]

This would place an open bracket before each reverse video field, and terminate each field with a close bracket. (Note: BS is the termset representation of the Backspace key.) Since the display attribute escape sequences are defined in pairs, a unique pair of special characters, such as braces, can be used for each different display attribute.

The scheme described for displaying fields in the preceding paragraph will work for many terminals. If might also be helpful to use the -p flag of termset to study the terminal escape sequences of terminals which have already been defined for some additional hints and tricks in implementing terminal escape sequences for a new terminal.