Randall, thanks for the quick response.
So the TERM environment variable is somewhat broken, in that setting it to
something else is a no-op. The first question that comes to mind is whether
this is characterized as a bug or a feature, and if a bug how deep does it
run, and how likely that it will ever be fixed.
On the issue of 3 terminal emulation models (cygwin console, RXVT, and
xterm) I am a bit lost. Forgive me for being slow here, but if I understand
you correctly the terminal emulation model is hard-coded into these
applications (knowing how would be nice). Does this mean that /etc/termcap
is not used at all? For example, if I change the termcap entry for linux
(cygwin inherits from linux) to generate vt100 function key codes then will
I get \EOP for f1 in the cygwin console?
Is there any reference materials I can read to bring myself up to date on
the architectural issues/shortcomings here?
On the problem with captoinfo the issue is that it prints nothing (other
than errors) to stdout. I have captured the output of "captoinfo
/etc/termcap" and "captoinfo -V /etc/termcap" in the two attached file for
your reference. As I said before, considering the findings so far, this is
probably unrelated to the topic of the discussion.
Thanks again,
Reza