Aug 26 2005
Fixing Backspace in Terminal.app
As many Unix or Linux users with a Mac know, Mac OS X’ Terminal.app doesn’t play nice with GNU’s Screen on a Linux or Unix server, mainly manifesting as backspace not working.
There are lots of fixes online (eg macosxhints) which cite incompatible termcap settings as the cause. Their solutions are efectively copying the OS X termcap settings into ~/.termcap/ on the remote server. I’d rather not resort to doing this, since I use screen on multiple servers to do all sorts of things everywhere.
Through some simple experimentation, I discovered it’s simply a simple tickbox setting within Terminal’s Window Preferences. Just enable the setting as highlighted here
Hahahaha!!! I was looking at all these fancy-shantcy fixes involving things like passing broken termcaps around, and then googled in the hope that there was a better way. Your page is the current Lucky google result, and I never imagined that it’d be that much easier than what I had in mind.
Thanks!