Curses & Terminfo

[Lenny Tropiano]

In article <11664 at brl-adm.ARPA> FRAZIER%AFGLSC.SPAN at star.stanford.edu writes:
|>
|>	I own an AT&T 3B1 running Unix SysV.  I have successfully compiled
|>a software package that is looking for a file called "/usr/lib/terminfo."
|>I contacted the author of the program in question and he said that the
|>only SYSV machine he had access to had the /usr/lib/terminfo file and as
|>far as he knew,  every SYSV had that file.  I have used SYSV's (other than
|>my own) and I have never seen this file.  Does this file actually exist 
|>and if so,  is there any chance someone could send me a copy of it.
|>(Providing it's not Huge.)  If not,  can someone tell me what this file
|>does and provide some suggestions as to how to avoid losing?  I'd
|>appreciate any help I can get..
|>

No!  Don't send a copy ... You should have this included with your
Operating System diskettes.   It is on a separate diskette and needs
to be installed separately (providing you are running release that the
terminfo stuff was introduced, 3.0 or higher I believe)  The diskette
should be labelled:

System Software   Version 3.51     (or 3.0, or 3.5)
Curses/Terminfo End User Package Disk

Install this diskette using the "install" login and Software Setup
off the Administration windows.

Now what does this file actually do? ... Well, in fact it isn't
really a file, it's a directory that contains more directories:

$ ls -CF /usr/lib/terminfo
./	2/	5/	9/	S/	c/	h/	o/	s/	v/
../	3/	6/	A/	a/	d/	i/	p/	t/	w/
1/	4/	7/	P/	b/	f/	l/	r/	u/

Each directory represents the first letter of the terminal you are using,
for example, vt100 would be in the "v" directory:

$ ls -CF /usr/lib/terminfo/v
./		vt100-am 	vt100-nav 	vt100-s-top 	vt100-w-nam 
../		vt100-bot-s 	vt100-nav-w 	vt100-top-s 	vt100-w-nav 
viewpoint 	vt100-nam 	vt100-s 	vt100-w 	vt220 
vt100 		vt100-nam-w 	vt100-s-bot 	vt100-w-am 	vt52 

These are compiled "terminfo" entries (see terminfo(4) in the AT&T UNIX PC
User's manual Volume I) files that CURSES uses to determine terminal
specific characteristics (ie, how to cursor position, etc..)  These files
can be decoded into their ASCII representation using "infocmp" ...

							-Lenny
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