Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Curses?
Message-ID: <16072@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 6 May 91 21:41:02 GMT
References: <48260@ut-emx.uucp> <1991May2.182227.9742@isc.rit.edu> <1991May2.212052.16181@isc.rit.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 13

In article <1991May2.212052.16181@isc.rit.edu> axi0349@isc.rit.edu (A.X. Ivasyuk ) writes:
>Curses uses another library called termcap
>to take care of these things on a large variety of terminals.

Actually, the official name for the termcap interface library is "termlib",
although for backward compatibility there is sometimes a link to libtermlib.a
called libtermcap.a.  "Termcap" is the name of the terminal capabilities data
base, which is a large text file containing encoded descriptions of terminals.

Termlib merely provides access to this data base.  Curses uses termlib to
simulate a model of a generic cursor-addressable interactive terminal, mapping
the generic operations to specific control sequences according to the termcap
description of the particular terminal being used.