DEC terms, VMS telnet & terminfo (FAQ?)

[Tom Kirkman]

Many thanks to the net for lots of helpful replys on how to nroff man pages
on a Sun (I was doing lots of things wrong, including not using -man on nroff)
You all helped so much that I have yet another stupid unix question.

Here is my story:

At St. John's most remote student users access the PI 4D25G by logging
in to a VMS VAX (on hard-wired terminals) & then telneting the PI
(using UCX on an ethernet connection).  Apparently the VAX passes
TERM=vt200 to the PI, but there is no /usr/lib/terminfo/v/vt200 file
(although there is a vt220 file).  So I used infocmp vt220 >vt200.tic,
editted the first line of the vt200.tic file to read vt200, and 
finally tic vt200.tic.  The result (A) doesn't allow VI to work &
(B) works incorrectly in a different way if I:
setenv TERM vt100, vi stuff, exit, setenv TERM vt200, vi stuff.
So I'm probably doing something both stupid & wrong.

So, my question is, how can I make VI work for students who telnet to
our PI & hence automatically have TERM=vt200.
(PS, the terms really are visual 603s with escape & backspace keys)

PPS I have lots of other stupid terminal/VAX related questions:
Should I/how do I make delete be the backspace key for those telneted vt220s?
I know I should get emacs pdq, but I would also like EDT & TPU emulators
for these students.  Can you suggest any?
How about using the console keyboard in a session telneted to the VMS vax...
any suggested keybinding to make using EDT & TPU easier?
UCX seems to lack hooks for remote printing.  Any cheap alternatives
or workarounds?

Again, many thanks for past (& I hope future) responses.

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Tom Kirkman                   DECnet:                           55860::TKIRKMAN
Dept. of Physics              HEP-> MNHEP::55860::        SPAN-> WAVES::55860::
St. John's University         INTERnet:           tkirkman%55860 at vx.acs.umn.edu
Collegeville, MN 56321                            tkirkman%55860 at msus1.msus.edu
(612) 363-3811                BITnet:                           tkirkman at csbsju
(612) 363-3151                                               FAX:(612) 363-2504
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