Re: Multi-tty

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2024 10:53:09 +0100
> 
> I was playing with multi-tty today, and I encountered strange behavior.
> For example, using 2 terminals that have different capabilties, say
> different TERM and/or COLORTERM, does not really work.
> 
> (Informal example: I start an emacs server -nw in iTerm
> (TERM=xterm-256color, COLORTERM=truecolor), then emacsclient --tty in a
> Terminal window (TERM=xterm, COLORTERM not set) => The Emacs frame in
> the Terminal window is obviously confused about the terminal's
> color capabilties.)
> 
> Is something like that worth writing a bug report? Or maybe it's already
> known, although I can't find anything in Debbugs?

This is simply not supported, never was.  The environment variables
are not per-terminal, so their effect is global, and the way we
process them (and have no other way) is that the environment variables
override what terminfo tells us.

We support these environment variables only as poor-man's terminfo,
for when terminfo doesn't tell us the whole truth, or the user "wants
more".  So what you should do is not set any such environment
variables at all, and let Emacs deduce the terminal capabilities from
the name of the terminal.