Hello

> > I am under the impression that some xterminal emulators
> > understand a certain escape sequence (maybe tsl ?) which
> > update the title bar.
> >
> > What does
> >
> > tput hsl
> >
> > and
> >
> > tput tsl ; echo -n hello ; tput fsl
> >
> > do ?
>
> They have no effect.

And what if you type

export TERM=xterm+sl

and then repeat the above tput commands ? That should give you the same effect
as Ralph has hardcoded into his prompt, assuming you have the correct
terminfo entry

> Not sure how to use infocmp, but tput does not show up, and
>
> $ infocmp | grep mlterm

Hmm, I might have been a bit terse. Tput allows you to look up
escape sequences in the terminfo/termcap database. We are interested
in tsl (escape sequence to write to the status bar). infocmp displays
the whole database, so you could type

infocmp mlterm | grep tsl
infocmp xterm+sl | grep tsl

to find this sequence. Man 8 terminfo gives you an explanation of the escape
codes.

If none of that works, try Ralph's hardcoded approach, eg

echo -e "\033]0;hello\007"

In an effort to trim things, many distributions ship only a small subset of
the terminfo database by default, and relegate the rest to an optional
package...

regards

marc