Why does VT100 refresh slowly?
Some terminal descriptions contain padding (i.e., time delay) information. Ncurses uses this information to slow down the rate at which characters are sent to the terminal. However, the vt100 terminal description, which is one of the most widely used (or misused) contains padding information for a real DEC VT100. It is not suitable as a replacement for the xterm terminal description. (Xterm requires no padding). If you must use the vt100 terminal description, you may consider setting the NCURSES_NO_PADDING environment variable which is implemented in current versions of ncurses (since late 1998). That directs ncurses to ignore nonmandatory time delays in the terminal description.
