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    this guy knows what hes talking about Commented Oct 20, 2015 at 13:06
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    @mikeserv, this guy is the maintainer of ncurses and xterm. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 8:53
  • @StéphaneChazelas - yes. I know. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 15:00
  • 1. alternate screen behavior is enough different than normal behavior to be an entirely different discussion, and off topic as not applicable to the question at hand, 2. it is also a convention to precede each byte of character data with a byte of color data, but it is the wrong convention for a terminal emulator. 3 agreed that it is possible not that anyone thinks it would be a good idea. 4. this behavior predates color. 5. good read. Further the behavior VTE suggests is undoubtedly appealing, but I wouldn't want to be responsible for designing it using ttl logic when this debate began. Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 2:52
  • Personally I believe most of these issues could be solved by only enabling bce on the alternate screen. This wouldn't break graphical programs (which should always use the alternate screen anyway), while providing a more useful background color behavior for simple text output on the main screen. (But, there is no way to specify this in terminfo...) Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 0:14