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But the escapes aren't actually standardised to particular values, as far as I remember. The terminfo database exists for a reason. Assuming every terminal is 'xterm' is an awful idea.

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I said ansi because there is an ansi standard. Deprecated, admittedly. Practically all terminals you're going to come across do support a reasonable subset of that standard. Assuming the terminal supports these is more likely to work than some random implementation of curses that might or might not have your terminal in the database.

If people really insist on using some weirdo terminal that doesn't support ansi, they are free to run a terminal emulator such as screen between the application and their terminal.

Worrying about every legacy glass terminal from the 70s is an awful idea.

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