Why doesn the screen clear when running vi?
This refers to the “alternate screen” feature, which has been used in its termcap file since 1988. On various systems, this feature may have been removed, although it has always been in the xterm sources. The feature is controllable (it can be enabled or disabled). However, as it was originally conceived, that ability to control it applies only to programs using termcap. Under SunOS 4.
