This file is a list of frequently reported problems with ncurses which are considered bugs elsewhere or configuration problems. If you're going to report a bug in ncurses, you should probably look over this list first. ******** If you use escape codes to configure a terminal, ncurses applications will just overwrite your settings when they exit. The proper way to do this is to also provide a custom terminfo type which sets the terminal correctly. For instance, for controlling the cursor shape/color/etc., change the 'cnorm' capability. ******** If you hit the "Print Screen" key while in a Linux console, your current application will likely dump core. The kernel maps that key to ^\, which generates a SIGQUIT by default. There's no bug here (although why that key was chosen is unclear). ******** Home/End keys don't work in some non-full-screen applications. The situation with this is somewhat complicated. For a background summary, see: http://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.faq.html#xterm_pc_style http://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.faq.html#xterm_arrows Essentially, the key sequences in terminfo entries (particularly khome and kend) are for full-screen applications only. This means that they are only valid after an 'smkx' sequence, to put the terminal into application mode. If you want to use these sequences in non-application mode, you need to recognize similar sequences - the versions which start with CSI (\E [) rather than SS3 (\E O). One example of how is in /etc/zshrc in recent Debian ZSH packages. ******** The Debian terminfo entry for xterm doesn't work with some other xterms There's no way to win this. For a while, Debian made its xterm default to a terminal type of 'xterm-debian', which seemed to fix the problem. In that case, however, connecting to remote non-Debian machines requires you to change your terminal type (since there will be no entry for xterm-debian there). Having changed back to a default terminal type of 'xterm', when you sit at a non-Debian system using some other version of xterm, applications on the Debian system may use features not available in your current xterm. The only workaround for this problem is to set your terminal type from xterm to one of the feature-limited versions when you log in to a Debian system remotely. "xterm-r6" and the associated terminal types are appropriate for this.