Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!unido!mikros!mwtech!martin From: martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: TERMINFO to TERMCAP conversion. Message-ID: <710@mwtech.UUCP> Date: 10 Apr 90 11:27:00 GMT References: <9237@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> <461@svcs1.UUCP> <12538@smoke.BRL.MIL> Reply-To: martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) Organization: MIKROS Systemware, Darmstadt/W-Germany Lines: 43 In article peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <12538@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes: [controverse arguments about TERMINFO and TERMCAP] Just to add some of my experiences with TERMCAP here ... One of our major german computer manufacturer, who pushed UNIX (alias SINIX) into the german small systems market some years ago, used TERMCAP in the following way: For nearly every software product that was available for their UNIX-variant, there was a separate entry in the TERMCAP-file. This was necessary, because the standard capabilities were not sufficient (and IMHO also not well understood). It doesn't hurt them too much, because they only suplied a certain (self manufactured) terminal type. Of course, those customers who wanted to connect other terminal hardware now had to update a multiple of TERMCAP-entries (assume 8 software products, 5 terminal types = 40 TERMCAP-entries!). Most of the new capabilities were undocumented ("why do you want to know the purpose, with our terminals it will work"). Furthermore I am not at all sure if all the software products did it completly in the "right" way. There are some dark corners, especially if you want to handle the wait-time specification at the start of string capabilities right. Some products which I know in more detail took the approach: "Modern terminals don't need wait-times, so why should we care ..." which of course leaves the owners of older equipment standing out in the rain. To draw the bottom line, it has its advantages that TERMINFO is *not* user-extendable. As I would additionally recommend that new programs should allways use curses, I don't see much need for extensions. As Peter mentioned, all individual extensions will create the problem, that the extensions of one manufacturer may collide with the extensions of another one. In the case of TERMINFO there will be extensions from AT&T (eg in SysV R3 they added a few graphic shapes.) If one specific application program needs more individual configuration (eg "logical to physical" key-mapping), it has allways the option to store the information elsewhere. NOTE: This was only *my* opinion, formed by earlier experiences with the way some companies tended to use TERMCAP. In an ideal world, things may have been handled in some other way and other conclusions would apply ... -- Martin Weitzel, email: martin@mwtech.UUCP, voice: 49-(0)6151-6 56 83