Term setting

[Ngoh Chean Siung]

Hi,

stty & tset are the 2 methods to set Termainl characteristics (TERM).

May I know what is the difference between them and when to apply which method?

regards.

[Mark Grant]

"stty" sets individual characteristics as per your instructions. "tset" sets all the characteristics of a terminal according to what is probably right for your terminal.

[Ngoh Chean Siung]

Hi,

Thanks Grant.

Could you pls provide me some cases when to apply these 2 methods? Because I'm still not very clear about it.

regards.

[Mark Grant · Accepted solution]

Generally speaking, you use "tset" in the users ".profile" or equivalent so that all the settings get set up when the user logs in. However, if you want to change something specific at some time, for example, you have a user who runs an application that uses CNTL C for a command, you might add a "stty intr ^T" to change the interrupt character for that user.

Alternatively, maybe you run some application that crashes, leaving you in raw mode. Everytime you press ENTER, the cursor moves down but not to the left and you find ^J is the only way to press a real ENTER. You might just run a brief "stty onlcr" to solve that one. You probably would also have to run "stty -noraw", "stty echoe" and "stty echo" in the above example but we'll not worry too much about that (particularly as "stty sane" would have done all of them for you).

So basically, "tset" is like running an application to set up your terminal and "stty" is for a more fine grained changes.