-.SH HISTORY
-System V Release 2 provided a \fBtic\fP utility.
-It accepted a single option: \fB\-v\fP (optionally followed by a number).
-According to Ross Ridge's comment in \fImytinfo\fP,
-this version of \fBtic\fP was
-unable to represent cancelled capabilities.
-.PP
-System V Release 3 provided a different \fBtic\fP utility,
-written by Pavel Curtis,
-(originally named \*(``compile\*('' in \fIpcurses\fP).
-This added an option \fB\-c\fP to check the file for
-errors, with the caveat that errors in \*(``use=\*('' links
-would not be reported.
-System V Release 3 documented a few warning messages which
-did not appear in \fIpcurses\fP.
-While the program itself was changed little as development
-continued with System V Release 4,
-the table of capabilities grew from 180 (\fIpcurses\fP) to 464 (Solaris).
-.PP
-In early development of ncurses (1993),
-Zeyd Ben-Halim used the table from \fImytinfo\fP to
-extend the \fIpcurses\fP table to 469 capabilities
-(456 matched SVr4, 8 were only in SVr4, 13 were not in SVr4).
-Of those 13, 11 were ultimately discarded
-(perhaps to match the draft of X/Open Curses).
-The exceptions were
-\fBmemory_lock_above\fP and
-\fBmemory_unlock\fP (see \fBuser_caps\fP(5)).
-.PP
-Eric Raymond incorporated parts of \fImytinfo\fP into ncurses
-to implement the termcap-to-terminfo source conversion,
-and extended that to begin development of
-the corresponding terminfo-to-termcap source conversion,
-Thomas Dickey completed that development over the course of several years.
-.PP
-In 1999, Thomas Dickey added the \fB\-x\fP option
-to support user-defined capabilities.
-.PP
-In 2010, Roy Marples provided a \fBtic\fP program
-and terminfo library for NetBSD.
-That implementation adapts several features from ncurses,
-including \fB@TIC@\fP's \fB\-x\fP option.
-.PP
-The \fB\-c\fP option tells \fB@TIC@\fP to check for problems in the
-terminfo source file.
-Continued development provides additional checks:
-.bP
-\fIpcurses\fP had 8 warnings
-.bP
-ncurses in 1996 had 16 warnings
-.bP
-Solaris (SVr4) curses has 28 warnings
-.bP
-NetBSD tic in 2019 has 19 warnings.
-.bP
-ncurses in 2019 has 96 warnings
-.PP
-The checking done in ncurses' \fB@TIC@\fP helps with the conversion to
-termcap, as well as pointing out errors and inconsistencies.
-It is also used to ensure consistency with the user-defined capabilities.
-There are 527 distinct capabilities in ncurses' terminal database;
-128 of those are user-defined.
-.SH PORTABILITY
-X/Open Curses, Issue 7 (2009) provides a brief description of \fBtic\fP.
-It lists one option: \fB\-c\fP.
-The omission of \fB\-v\fP is unexpected.
-The change history states that the description is derived from True64 UNIX.
-According to its manual pages, that system also supported the \fB\-v\fP option.
-.PP
-Shortly after Issue 7 was released, Tru64 was discontinued.
-As of 2019, the surviving implementations of \fBtic\fP
-are SVr4 (AIX, HP-UX and Solaris),
-ncurses
-and NetBSD curses.
-The SVr4 \fBtic\fP programs all support the \fB\-v\fP option.
-The NetBSD \fBtic\fP program follows X/Open's documentation,
-omitting the \fB\-v\fP option.
-.PP
-The X/Open rationale states that some implementations of \fBtic\fP
-read terminal descriptions from the standard input if the \fIfile\fP
-parameter is omitted.
-None of these implementations do that.
-Further, it comments that some may choose to read from \*(''./terminfo.src\*(''
-but that is obsolescent behavior from SVr2,
-and is not (for example) a documented feature of SVr3.
-.SS COMPATIBILITY