Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!axiom!drilex!rclex!enmasse!keith
From: keith@enmasse.UUCP (Keith Crews)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.unix,net.info-terms
Subject: Re: Terminfo()--Ideas needed. System V
Message-ID: <289@enmasse.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-May-86 10:23:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: enmasse.289
Posted: Thu May 15 10:23:15 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 16-May-86 06:14:28 EDT
References: <1135@bunker.UUCP> <155@molihp.UUCP> <2774@pegasus.UUCP> <1553@ecsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: keith@enmasse.UUCP (Keith Crews)
Distribution: net
Organization: EnMasse Computer Corp, Acton, MA
Lines: 32
Xref: linus net.unix-wizards:15041 net.unix:7194 net.info-terms:480

In article <1553@ecsvax.UUCP> bet@ecsvax.UUCP (Bennett E. Todd III) writes:
.
.
.
>still find it to be a HUGE step backwards in design: there just isn't
>sufficient justification for making the active, working database a
>compiled binary file -- PARICULARLY when AT&T then doesn't include the
>sources to the terminfo descriptions. As shipped, the description for
>the DMD5620 is noticibly broken. To fix it, I'll have to completely
>rewrite the entire thing, since the readable (modifyable) version isn't
>available.

The following was true for release 1 of system V - I do not know if it has
since been improved.

It turns out to not be hard (1-2 days) to write a program that takes the binary
terminal description and turns it into ascii that can be editted and
then recompiled using tic.  There was a shell script that was printed in
some Unix magazine a while back that did a similar thing.
You will find that many (all?)
of the terminfo descriptions distributed with system V are useless for
using anything but vi.  The automatic translator does an incomplete and
often syntactically incorrect job.
Even worse, tic does not flag many (any?) errors on input.
So if you misspell a terminal capability, rather than being told that
you have an error, it just quietly ignores that specification.
After I wrote the above program it at least provided a method for determining
what terminfo description you are really using and verifying that
what you thought you specified actually got compiled into the database.
(I'd post the program if I could but I can't.)

	Keith Crews