Date: 10 Apr 96 03:20:00 GMT From: peter@jhome.DIALix.COM (Peter Wemm) To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: termcap/curses vs ncurses Message-ID: <peter.829106400@jhome.DIALix.COM> References: <199604081458.JAA10195@compound.think.com>
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alk@Think.COM (Tony Kimball) writes: > From: "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@ki.net> > Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 01:26:38 -0400 (EDT) > Is *everyone* set against terminfo? If so, I'll work on 1.9.9 > so that it parses only termcap and doesn't create a .terminfo directory, > just sounds crippling to me :( >One man's opinion: terminfo is gross over-engineering cruft, and more >importantly it is a bother for sysadmin. As long as there is no need >to bring in other software that depends upon it, it seems desirable to >avoid the pollution. What I would like to see is a termcap style file methodology, but with terminfo's descriptive capability names. I *intensely* dislike the 2-character capability codes in termcap. Having come from a SVR4 background, I can deal with the abuse of the filesystem layout, but much prefer the single .db file format. How about something like this, for the purposes of the discussion... 1: have a terminfo.src file, like we have a termcap.src at the moment only it's inherently self-descriptive. No longer do you need to look up what the @7 (and other *crap* like that) capability is. 2: either compile or load that into a terminfo.db file. ncurses will be the primary consumer of the descriptions, so it makes sense to compile it for ncurses use. Dont forget, we can put multiple entries into the .db file! and, as a backwards compatability thing which can be turned off: 3: *generate* a /usr/share/misc/termcap from terminfo.src, this involves converting the descriptive names to 2-char names and ignoring the ones that have no eqivalent (eg: mouse stuff etc.) 4: perhaps *generate* a termcap.db for the old curses/termcap library, but this may not be needed as the termcap/curses stuff can parse the flat file. The .db files can have several entries per terminal type, and contain binary very easily. eg, for AT386, have two entries: "at386" (plain text) and "_nc_v1.at386" for a versioned ncurses-specific compiled format. -Peter
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