curses, terminfo, and termcap

[John Quarterman]

From: John Quarterman (moderator) <ut-sally!std-unix>
 
Topic: curses, terminfo, and termcap

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Date: Tue, 2 Jul 85 15:49:39 CDT
From: Stan Barber <neuro1!sob at RICE.ARPA>
Subject: curses
Apparently-To: std-unix at ut-sally.arpa

With the posting of the game "Battleship" in net.sources.games recently 
came the realization that curses is not the same on SYSVr2 and BSD.

After reading the instructions on SYSVr2, I think is is more powerful than
the Ken Arnold original. It also seems upward compartable (for the most 
part) with Ken Arnold.

I am not sure if curses is considered part of the "standard", but would
like to see some discussion of this as well as the larger issure of
termcap vs. terminfo format for terminal capabilities.
Stan

[
There has been recent discussion of all these things in net.unix.
The System V Release 2 curses has apparently been extensively modified
by Mark Horton, to do input translation, among other things.  He also
appears to be largely responsible for terminfo.

The world seems to be moving from termcap to terminfo (for good reason,
I think).  There is a public domain termcap to terminfo translator.
	From: robert at gitpyr.UUCP (Robert Viduya)
	Newsgroups: net.sources
	Subject: termcap to terminfo translator
	Message-ID: <83 at gitpyr.UUCP>
	Date: 30 Jan 85 20:42:01 GMT
	Organization: Georgia Tech, Atlanta

A public domain version of curses and terminfo by Pavel Curtis of
Cornell University was posted to mod.sources in December 1984.
It appears to include most of the System V Release 2 innovations.

I seem to recall that terminfo is supposed to be supplied with 4.3BSD,
perhaps as user contributed software, but I don't remember for sure.
	-mod ]

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-- 

John Quarterman, jsq at ut-sally.ARPA, {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!jsq