V10/ncurses/terminfo/README

@(#)README	1.3

The files in this directory with the .ti suffix are terminfo sources.
They should be compiled (separately or by catting them together into
terminfo.src) with tic, placing the results in /usr/lib/terminfo/?/*.

The cvt files are useful tools for converting termcap to terminfo.
They are not 100% accurate, but do most of the conversion for you.
cvt.ex is an ex script to convert a termcap description into a
terminfo description.  Note that it will not convert padding specifications,
so they must be done by hand.  Note also that typical termcap entries
do not give as much information as terminfo, so the resulting terminfo
entry is often incomplete (e.g. won't tell you the terminal uses
xon/xoff handshaking, or what extra function keys send).  You are
urged to read the list of terminfo capabilities and augment your
terminfo descriptions accordingly.

The cvt.h file is useful for a quick hack at converting termcap programs
which use uppercase 2 letter names for capabilities to use terminfo.
Since tget* are provided anyway, this is of questionable value unless
your program barely fits on a pdp-11.

The cvt.sed script is useful for actually editing the source of the same
class of programs.  It requires a sed that understands \< and \>, the
mod is trivial to make if you look at the corresponding code in ex or
grep.

There are other incompatibilities at the user level between termcap and
terminfo.  A program which creates a termcap description and then
passes it to tgetent (e.g. vi used to do this if no TERM was set) or
which puts such a description in the environment for a child cannot
possibly work, since terminfo puts the parser into the compiler, not
the user program.  If you want to give a child a smaller window, set
up the LINES and COLUMNS environment variables or implement the JWINSIZE
ioctl.

If you want to edit your own personal terminfo descriptions (and are not
a super user on your system) the method is different.  Set
TERMINFO=$HOME/terminfo (or wherever you put the compiled tree) in your
environment, then compile your source with tic.  Tic and user programs
will check in $TERMINFO before looking in /usr/lib/terminfo.