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Annotation of researchv10no/ncurses/terminfo/README, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1       root        1: @(#)README     1.3
                      2: 
                      3: The files in this directory with the .ti suffix are terminfo sources.
                      4: They should be compiled (separately or by catting them together into
                      5: terminfo.src) with tic, placing the results in /usr/lib/terminfo/?/*.
                      6: 
                      7: The cvt files are useful tools for converting termcap to terminfo.
                      8: They are not 100% accurate, but do most of the conversion for you.
                      9: cvt.ex is an ex script to convert a termcap description into a
                     10: terminfo description.  Note that it will not convert padding specifications,
                     11: so they must be done by hand.  Note also that typical termcap entries
                     12: do not give as much information as terminfo, so the resulting terminfo
                     13: entry is often incomplete (e.g. won't tell you the terminal uses
                     14: xon/xoff handshaking, or what extra function keys send).  You are
                     15: urged to read the list of terminfo capabilities and augment your
                     16: terminfo descriptions accordingly.
                     17: 
                     18: The cvt.h file is useful for a quick hack at converting termcap programs
                     19: which use uppercase 2 letter names for capabilities to use terminfo.
                     20: Since tget* are provided anyway, this is of questionable value unless
                     21: your program barely fits on a pdp-11.
                     22: 
                     23: The cvt.sed script is useful for actually editing the source of the same
                     24: class of programs.  It requires a sed that understands \< and \>, the
                     25: mod is trivial to make if you look at the corresponding code in ex or
                     26: grep.
                     27: 
                     28: There are other incompatibilities at the user level between termcap and
                     29: terminfo.  A program which creates a termcap description and then
                     30: passes it to tgetent (e.g. vi used to do this if no TERM was set) or
                     31: which puts such a description in the environment for a child cannot
                     32: possibly work, since terminfo puts the parser into the compiler, not
                     33: the user program.  If you want to give a child a smaller window, set
                     34: up the LINES and COLUMNS environment variables or implement the JWINSIZE
                     35: ioctl.
                     36: 
                     37: If you want to edit your own personal terminfo descriptions (and are not
                     38: a super user on your system) the method is different.  Set
                     39: TERMINFO=$HOME/terminfo (or wherever you put the compiled tree) in your
                     40: environment, then compile your source with tic.  Tic and user programs
                     41: will check in $TERMINFO before looking in /usr/lib/terminfo.

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