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Date:      Wed, 16 Jan 2002 23:24:53 -0800
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        Jason Evans <jasone@canonware.com>
Cc:        arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: termcap versus terminfo
Message-ID:  <3C467C45.2D7A3381@mindspring.com>
References:  <20020116165926.N451@canonware.com> <20020116230552.O451@canonware.com>

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Jason Evans wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2002 at 04:59:26PM -0800, Jason Evans wrote:
> > Are there any good reasons for not making this change?
> 
> A NetBSD developer I was chatting with this evening pointed out that
> terminfo is not extensible in a portable manner, since the compiled
> terminfo files use a pre-defined structure, where each element corresponds
> to a particular capability.  While this doesn't make the compiled format
> useless, it does make portable access of vendor extensions (non-standard
> capability keys) more or less impossible.  termcap doesn't have this
> problem.

One of the same objections I raised... BSD minds think alike... 8-)

> Interestingly, he also mentioned that NetBSD developers have continued to
> work on the original BSD curses code, and they have implemented the
> majority of the extensions documented in SUSv2 at this point.

It's worth looking at; I think that abstracting the capability
code from the ncurses code would be a good idea, if it could be
done, though, since t's so widely used and active maintained,
so let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater...

-- Terry

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