Terminal and curses-based menus

asked 2018-01-08 17:11:49 +0300

DaveRo
3404 ●63 ●102 ●108

updated 2018-01-11 14:50:09 +0300

I have a script with uses 'dialog' curses menus. It runs on Debian (actually Armbian) over SSH.
Here is an example screen in connectbot on Android:
https://www.cjoint.com/data/HAioKvPEnz8_Screenshot-20180108-140316.png
Here it is running in terminal on my Jolla C:
https://www.cjoint.com/data/HAioL3Qy3z8_Screenshot-20180108-001.png

As you can see, what should be an expanse of blue is mainly transparent. And some areas of grey inside the menu box also. Any idea why?

There's no difference, BTW, between the data behind the short album names - like 'Ocre' - and the longer ones - like 'The Great Dark Water'. It seems that a consecutive series of about 15 blank coloured spaces comes out transparent.

One problem using these menus is that unless I limit them to the top half of the display then they slide out of view as soon as I hit a key - usually it's cursor down. I only need cursor up/down and numerics to operate it - and later mplayer keys like p q > < and a few others.

Could I build my own one-row vkb and get terminal to use it?

Edited to add:

Having learned about ANSI codes and xterm mode, and poked about in the code for fingerterm (though I don't know C) I think this a bug. I think that curses must send a code for 'insert n blanks' whenever there are more than 15. Terminal does that, but forgets the background colour. I suspect that's because it doesn't select 'overwrite mode'.