Termcap, IC, and IM

[Jym Dyer]

In article <10860 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
> DEC is wrong.  You should specify both im/ei and ic only if the terminal
> requires both.

I figured as much.  There are lots of termcap entries, however, where
 people have specified values for ic and put in ":im=:" (and ":ei=:").
  I suspect folks do this because they think it's more efficient . . .

> By the way, IM and IC are not the same as im and ic.  There is no IM
> capability, and IC takes a parameter which specifies how many spaces
> are to be inserted.

The uppercase forms are the curses variables, which correspond to the
 lowercase capabilities.  I'm sorry if this was confusing.

It looks to me like DEC should add another flag capability to its
 termtable, telling whether or not its im-equivalent is sufficient to
  insert a character (seeing as how they'll undoubtedly keep their ic-
   equivalent in there as well).
    <_Jym_>