Terminal Capabilities via telnet Sessions

[John R. Red-horse]

Hello,
We often use windows out of a variety of workstations (e.g. HP, SUN, etc.)
to initiate a session on our Cray 1-S running the UNICOS OS.  I believe
it's version 5.1.18.  At any rate we do this by using telnet between the
two machines.  Our problem: quite often our terminal characteristics are
not interpreted correctly and various full screen utilities such as more,
vi,... don't work.  On the surface, this appears to be an easy question,
yet the obvious answer, setting the capabilities using tset don't always
work.  Would someone mind giving me the rundown on how telnet interfaces
the terminal driver with the end user?  I mean, where the heck does stty
enter into things.

Also, does anyone out there in
netland have the source code for a variety, or for that matter just one,
terminal in the form of input to tic (?) from which we can build additional
terminfo formatted files.  Lastly, must this interface always be used?
What if I have a vt100 emulator that has 48 lines---can I change my terminal
characteristics on the fly?

A million thanks to anyone who can lend a hand.

Cheers,