From owner-freebsd-current Tue Apr 9 05:41:27 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id FAA09052 for current-outgoing; Tue, 9 Apr 1996 05:41:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ghost.uunet.ca (ghost.uunet.ca [142.77.1.100]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id FAA09047 for ; Tue, 9 Apr 1996 05:41:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: by ghost.uunet.ca id <59625-2>; Tue, 9 Apr 1996 08:39:59 -0400 Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 08:39:57 -0400 From: Cat Okita To: "Eric S. Raymond" cc: Terry Lambert , ache@astral.msk.su, scrappy@ki.net, current@FreeBSD.org, ncurses-list@netcom.com Subject: Re: terminfo-less ncurses In-Reply-To: <199604082331.TAA25937@locke.ccil.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 8 Apr 1996, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > But these are details. Show me a new terminal that can't be described > essentially completely by terminfo. Go ahead. Try. They're just not > building weird command sets like they used to -- async-terminal technology > now consists of 99% VT100/ANSI/ECMA-48 clones and 1% fossils. ...and on another level, the terminfo structure is a *Bloody Nuisance* when you're stuck trying to boot a machine with a terminal, and there isn't an entry for it. Checking the 'entry' is impossible under terminfo - it's compiled, so you can't even head for the closest match (and if you've ever been stuck trying to find a definition for useful things like escape characters and function keys...) - with the termcap file, not only do you know where to look, you can figure out what the closest match is *without* having to know the last 10 years worth of terminals inside out and backwards... Cat