Comment # 8 on bug 1087982 from Dr. Werner Fink

(In reply to Carlos Robinson from comment #7)
> I'm sorry to say that the problem is present on 15.1
> 
> When I ssh to another system, the title is not updated; on xterm it is.
> 
> When I "su -", the tittle is not updated to reflect that I'm root; on xterm
> it is.
> 
> Tested on 3 computers this minute.

I though that I had explained that as long as there is no +sl variant of the
terminfo data file, this is declaring that there is a status, there is no way
to detect if the terminal supports a status line:

  echo $TERM
  xterm
  ls /usr/share/terminfo/${TERM::1}/${TERM}+sl
  /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm+sl

simply shoot escape sequences to an unknown terminal is somewhat risky