On Sat, 9 Nov 2019 20:58:03 -0500, Haines wrote in message
<20191110015803.GB27009@???>:

> I'm running mltrm as my main terminal under Beowulf. I vaguely recall
> that with xterm the path to the location of the current session of
> the terminal was printed along the top of the window frame. At
> present it simply displays "mlterm".

..aye, http://mlterm.sourceforge.net/mlterm.1.html clearly states:
       -T, --title=name
              Specify a title for a mlterm window.  The  default
              is "mlterm".

..further up, it adds to the confusion by stating:
       -N, --name=name
              Specify   application   name.    The   default  is
              "mlterm".

..further down, it helpfully states: ...
       -y, --term=string
              Specify  terminal  type,  i.e.,  the value of TERM
              variable.  The default is xterm.

...which means it should accept xterm tricks from e.g.
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.faq.html#how2_title
and: https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.html


..you may want to have your shell set the window (and tabs) title.
Chk your output of 'env ', you may have unset what you want set.

..your ~/.mlterm/main config file may have a ...
    title=name (-T, --title)
         Title name.

...entry, which should accept shell strings like $PS1 and $PWD
and ~/.mlterm/msg.log should tell you what works and not.


..try launch it from e.g. an xterm cli with e.g.:
mlterm -T $PS1 &



..googling possible explanations to your findings, may be found in both
https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#tic-mlterm and
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html#h2-Title-Modes

...or:      titleModes (class TitleModes)
               Tells xterm whether to accept or return window- and
        icon-labels in ISO-8859-1 (the default) or UTF-8.
        Either can be encoded in hexadecimal.  The default for
        this resource is “0”.

               Each bit (bit “0” is 1, bit “1” is 2, etc.)  corresponds
               to one of the parameters set by the title modes control
               sequence:

               0    Set window/icon labels using hexadecimal

               1    Query window/icon labels using hexadecimal

               2    Set window/icon labels using UTF-8 (overrides
                    utf8Title resource).

               3    Query window/icon labels using UTF-8

...from man xterm, if you threw out everything ISO-8859-* and if 
mlterm still needs such support, 
http://mlterm.sourceforge.net/mlterm.1.html advices:
       -8, --88591(=bool)
              Use ISO8859-1 fonts for US-ASCII part  of  various
              encodings.

...and:
       -n, --noucsfont(=bool)
              Use non-Unicode fonts even when mlterm encoding is
              UTF-8.   Useful  when  you  don't  have ISO10646-1
              fonts and you want to  use  UTF-8  encoding.   The
              default is false.

...and:
       -u, --onlyucsfont(=bool)
              Use Unicode fonts even when mlterm encoding is not
              UTF-8.  Useful when you have  ISO10646  fonts  but
              you  don't  have  other fonts and want to use non-
              UTF-8 encodings.  Note that conversion to  Unicode
              is lossy.  i.e. if mlterm encoding is not a subset
              of Unicode like ISO-2022-JP-2 or  EUC-TW,  charac-
              ters  which  are  regarded  as a same character in
              Unicode will be displayed with the same glyph  and
              cannot be distinguished.

              The default is false.

...and:
       --ucsnoconv=value
              Use  unicode  fonts  partially  regardless  of  -n
              option.

              e.g.) --ucsnoconv=U+1234-5678,U+0123-4567

...and: 
CONFIGURATION
       mlterm  loads  configuration  files  of  "main",  "font",
       "vfont",   "tfont",   "aafont",   "vaafont",   "taafont",
       "color", "key", "termcap", and "xim" on start up.  "menu"
       configuration file is loaded  by  the  configurable  menu
       displayer (mlterm-menu).  See the section of CONFIGURABLE
       MENU for detail.

..also chk your mlterm's GUI CONFIGURATOR, which may have changed
things to your displeasure.


..you may be looking for mlterm's equvivalent of konsole's %w (which
also sets konsole's tab names) and xterm's -title (alias -T )
in man xterm:

       title (class Title)
               Specifies a string that may be used by the window
           manager when displaying this application.

> Did some searching and reading of man mlterm, but failed to find how
> to get it to display its current path in the frame. Can it be done?

..try title=$PWD in your ~/.mlterm/main config file and tell us.
Me, I find $PS1 sexier. ;o)


--
..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt Karlsen
...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry...
Scenarios always come in sets of three:
best case, worst case, and just in case.