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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 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 08 Apr 1996 17:40:22 PDT."
             <199604090040.RAA03591@phaeton.artisoft.com> 
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 1996 18:53:41 -0700
Message-ID: <13774.829014821@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org
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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