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I use urxvt with GNU screen with X11 on my mac. I like it a lot. My only issue, is that when I quit vim, it puts the shell prompt underneath the vim window. This isn't a huge issue, but it basically hides whatever I was doing before I opened vim. If I use urxvt without GNU screen and quit vim, it hides the vim window and puts my shell prompt right after the prompt that opened vim.

Any idea as to what I can fix in screen to help with this?

Does this have something to do with the screen blanker?

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3 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

Enable the altscreen option in ~/.screenrc.

Full-screen programs use a feature of xterm (and compatible) called "alternate screen", which has a separate screen buffer and (often) minor behavior changes to adapt to such interfaces. (For example, vte-based terminals disable scrollback and automatically convert mouse wheel to arrow keys, if the program hasn't requested it explicitly.) The program enters the 'altscreen' when started, and goes back to 'normal' when exiting.

There is only one alternate screen buffer, and screen itself activates it. The altscreen option is needed to enable alternate buffer emulation for programs running inside.

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I can't upvote you enough! –  George Dec 15 '12 at 9:11
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Add this line to your ~/.screenrc:

altscreen on
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here is a good link with common settings you should have in your screenrc or .screenrc http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Screen

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