Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2023 19:29:36 +0100 From: Daniel Tameling <tamelingdaniel@gmail.com> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Cursing the tput utility - the penguin strikes again Message-ID: <Y/ewkOQgK4K2K8Ne@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <974a81c2-a92d-7f94-5f96-869bddfe21f3@fjl.co.uk> References: <974a81c2-a92d-7f94-5f96-869bddfe21f3@fjl.co.uk>
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On Thu, Feb 23, 2023 at 04:45:21PM +0000, Frank Leonhardt wrote: > I'm looking at another documentation snafu here. > > So there's a tput utility for controlling the terminal in BSD. It takes > "attributes" and arguments and outputs whatever control codes are needed to > make the terminal do what you need in a portable way (switch to bold, move > the cursor, clear to EOL or whatever). It doesn't matter if you're using an > VT52 terminal or xterm - tput does the translation. > > What the man page talks about as "attributes" are actually tcap codes - > there's a list of them under "man 5 terminfo". So, to move the cursor to the > top left use "tcap cm 0 0 " - "cm" being the tcap code for Cursor Move. The > location and format of the database in the man page is way off mark, but > never mind. > > So what's my problem? > > Well use the tcap utility on non-BSD platforms and it suddenly doesn't work. > It turns out that the penguinistas thought using the "Cap Name" instead of > the "TCap Code" was a good idea. Some of the codes are the same, some are > not. In fact most are not. > > So for example, "cm" becomes "cup", and "ce" (Clear End-of-line) is "el". On > a Linux you probably need to use "tcap cup 0 0" instead of "tcap cm 0 0. > > So my question is, assuming one wants one's scripts to be compatible with > Linux, what's the best way of going about it? Is there some new > platform-independent way of doing this I'm too old to know about, or do you > really have to write shell scripts to cope with both by defining the code to > use up front based on the output of uname? > > I can figure this out - I just want to know if there's a "best practice" > solution before rolling my own. If anyone reading expresses an interest I > might put the best answer I can find in a blog post. > > Thanks, Frank. > > > Did you try using the tput from devel/ncurses instead? I once ran into a similar problem and if I remember correctly that one works with the same options as on Linux because it's the one installed there. And it is frequently already installed as a dependency; the problem is just that the FreeBSD tput is earlier in PATH. -- Kind regards, Daniel
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