FAQ of tmux says that "Inside tmux TERM must be screen, tmux or similar". Why is that? How about xterm type terminal description, like xterm-256color? Is there any potential compatibility problem between tmux and xterm-256color? Is it possible to customize tmux to be compatible with xterm-256color?
1 Answer
I believe it is like this:
To start screen you open an xterm(?)...
Then at that prompt you will have $TERM set accordingly, telling details about xterm control codes that can be used to get certain "functions" within this "display".
When you start "screen", there will be another layer on top of this, another 'display' with functions - that are provided by screen, so a specific $TERM needs to be present, and this might not be exactly equal to the underlying xterm (or even worse for other term-emulators).
Hooks to find more info / details:
e.g. man; tput(1), ncurses(3), termcap(3), terminfo(5)
