Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 17:02:53 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: "W. L. Estes" <wlestes AT hamlet DOT uncg DOT edu>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: bash, emacs 19.34, termcap
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.93.970110121925.518A-100000@euler.uncg.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970115165516.15458C-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Fri, 10 Jan 1997, W. L. Estes wrote:

> while trying to run emacs under bash, the following error message occurs:
> 
> emacs: Cannot open termcap database file.
> 
> how can this be fixed?

Emacs on MSDOS assumes that the environment variable TERM is not defined, 
since that is how the things are on most MSDOS/MS-Windows machines.  But 
`bash' *does* define it, and thus Emacs tries to access the termcap 
database for the entry cited by the value of $TERM, which will fail on 
most MSDOS systems.

The best way to solve this is to add an [emacs] section on your DJGPP.ENV 
file, which says thus:

	[emacs]
	TERM=

(you could also say TERM=internal, since that's what Emacs on MSDOS 
defines for itself when TERM is undefined).  This will leave $TERM as it 
is now outside Emacs, but Emacs will see an empty value and work happily 
ever after.

A question to Daisuke Aoyama: is it really necessary for `bash' to define 
$TERM?  What happens if the DJGPP port won't define it?  I think defining 
$TERM could break some other ports of Unix software too, so if it isn't 
really required, I'd suggest not to define it.