Date: Mon, 08 Apr 1996 18:53:41 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Cc: esr@locke.ccil.org (Eric S. Raymond), ache@astral.msk.su, scrappy@ki.net, current@FreeBSD.org, ncurses-list@netcom.com Subject: Re: terminfo-less ncurses Message-ID: <13774.829014821@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 08 Apr 1996 17:40:22 PDT." <199604090040.RAA03591@phaeton.artisoft.com>
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> You might as well make each terminal type a directory instead of a file, > and make each capability a file, and make each file contain one escape > sequence/whatever. I think we're starting to lose our perspective a little at this point. FWIW, I don't really care that terminfo does things the way it does. It works just fine and I think that this whole termcap/terminfo war is something of a waste of time. Let's move on. The only strong argument I could possibly make for preserving some semblance of termcap (and perhaps only as a generated "shadow" of the terminfo master copy) is that lots of BSD folks *know* termcap, they know how to fiddle entries and I'd hate to take the doc hit for terminfo if I didn't have to. Let's face it: terminfo is more complex than termcap and probably a fair bit more byzantine than it needs to be. I can't even recall the arguments to tic on most days, nor do I recall whether or not one has to move the generated "binary" someplace or if it does it automagically or what. Sure, I can read the man page and have at least 3 or 4 times, but it just goes right out of my head again. Termcap is simple - I just edit the damn thing and bang, my change is made. terminfo seems to exemplify the SYSV attitude towards UNIX - take a simple mechanism and break it into 14 different configuration files. So I guess in summary I can only say this: terminfo or termcap, fine, just make it SIMPLE TO USE and not an evolutionary step backwards for BSD in the KISS category. Jordan
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