X-Git-Url: http://ncurses.scripts.mit.edu/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=doc%2Fhtml%2Fman%2Fcurs_termcap.3x.html;fp=doc%2Fhtml%2Fman%2Fcurs_termcap.3x.html;h=fff45be4804b1cb012e7405093772869bc48ddca;hb=159cd0555e0efc14be66c9c3a1548f58908b6a1d;hp=85c315547c8d62b844b9aac4f5f6b1f9f87c495b;hpb=d90067f9008bb8338a77c1ed519bc108c275ed04;p=ncurses.git
diff --git a/doc/html/man/curs_termcap.3x.html b/doc/html/man/curs_termcap.3x.html
index 85c31554..fff45be4 100644
--- a/doc/html/man/curs_termcap.3x.html
+++ b/doc/html/man/curs_termcap.3x.html
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
* sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written *
* authorization. *
****************************************************************************
- * @Id: curs_termcap.3x,v 1.76 2023/12/18 00:22:30 tom Exp @
+ * @Id: curs_termcap.3x,v 1.80 2023/12/23 20:19:05 tom Exp @
* See <https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2BSD/src/\
* termlib/termcap.c>.
* See https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/kirkmck.html
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@
* Observe the `tncktc()`, `tnamatch()`, `tskip()`, and `tdecode()`
* entry points disappearing from termcap.c.
* 2BSD became a branch retaining support for non-virtual memory
- * systems (like the PDP-11) whereas most BSD development focused on
+ * systems (such as the PDP-11) whereas most BSD development focused on
* the VAX and other VM-enabled systems starting with 3BSD.
* This man page previously located a termcap.h in 2BSD, but that may
* be confusion arising from its backport to 2.9BSD (and still present
@@ -62,12 +62,12 @@
-curs_termcap 3x 2023-12-17 ncurses 6.4 Library calls
+curs_termcap 3x 2023-12-23 ncurses 6.4 Library calls
-
tgetent loads the terminal database entry for name; see term(7). This
- must be done before calling any of the other functions. It returns:
+ must be done before calling any of the other functions. It returns
- 1 on success,
+ 1 on success,
- 0 if there is no such entry (or if the matching entry describes a
- generic terminal, having too little information for curses
- applications to run), and
+ 0 if there is no such entry (or if the matching entry describes a
+ generic terminal, having too little information for curses
+ applications to run), and
- -1 if the terminfo database could not be found.
+ -1 if the terminfo database could not be found.
This implementation differs from those of historical termcap libraries.
@@ -126,10 +126,10 @@
form, which is not the same thing.
o The meanings of the return values differ. The BSD termcap
- library does not check whether the terminal type description is
- marked with the gn (generic) capability, nor whether the
- terminal type description supports an addressable cursor, a
- property essential for any curses implementation to operate.
+ library does not check whether the terminal type description
+ includes the generic (gn) capability, nor whether the terminal
+ type description supports an addressable cursor, a property
+ essential for any curses implementation to operate.
@@ -175,9 +175,9 @@
Doing so reveals a quirk in tgoto: most hardware terminals use
cursor addressing with row first, but the original developers of
the termcap interface chose to put the col (column) parameter
- first. The tgoto function swaps the order of parameters. It does
- this even for calls requiring only a single parameter. In that
- case, the first parameter is merely a placeholder.
+ first. The tgoto function swaps the order of its parameters. It
+ does this even for calls requiring only a single parameter. In
+ that case, the first parameter is merely a placeholder.
o Normally the ncurses library is compiled without full termcap
support. In that case, tgoto uses an internal version of tparm(3x)
@@ -191,7 +191,7 @@
applications should not rely upon its availability.
tputs is described in curs_terminfo(3x). It can retrieve capabilities
- by either termcap or terminfo name.
+ by either termcap or terminfo code.
@@ -214,8 +214,8 @@
del_curterm(cur_term);
to free this memory, but there is an additional complication with
ncurses. It uses a fixed-size pool of storage locations, one per value
- of the TERM environment variable when tgetent is called. The screen(1)
- program relies upon this arrangement to improve its performance.
+ of the terminal name parameter given to tgetent. The screen(1) program
+ relies upon this arrangement to improve its performance.
An application that uses only the termcap functions, not the higher
level curses API, could release the memory using del_curterm(3x),
@@ -255,18 +255,18 @@
o X/Open Curses, Issue 4, Version 2 (1996), describes these
- functions. However, they are marked "TO BE WITHDRAWN".
+ functions, marking them as "TO BE WITHDRAWN".
- o X/Open Curses, Issue 7 (2009) marked the termcap interface (along
+ o X/Open Curses, Issue 7 (2009) marks the termcap interface (along
with vwprintw and vwscanw) as withdrawn.
Neither X/Open Curses nor the SVr4 man pages documented the return
- values of tgetent correctly, though all three were in fact returned
- ever since SVr1. In particular, an omission in the X/Open Curses
- specification has been misinterpreted to mean that tgetent returns OK
- or ERR. Because the purpose of these functions is to provide
- compatibility with the termcap library, that is a defect in X/Open
- Curses, Issue 4, Version 2 rather than in ncurses.
+ values of tgetent correctly, though all three shown here were in fact
+ returned ever since SVr1. In particular, an omission in the X/Open
+ Curses specification has been misinterpreted to mean that tgetent
+ returns OK or ERR. Because the purpose of these functions is to
+ provide compatibility with the termcap library, that is a defect in
+ X/Open Curses, Issue 4, Version 2 rather than in ncurses.
CompatibilitywithBSDtermcap
Externally visible variables are provided for support of certain
@@ -313,36 +313,35 @@
4BSD (November 1980) renamed termlib to termcap and added another test
program. The library remained much the same though 4.3BSD (June 1986).
- 4.4BSD-Lite (June 1994) refactored it but left the API unchanged.
+ 4.4BSD-Lite (June 1994) refactored it, leaving the API unchanged.
- Function prototypes were a feature of the forthcoming ANSI C (1989).
- Thus the library provided no header file declaring them. Nevertheless,
- the BSD sources included two different termcap.h header files over
- time.
+ Function prototypes were a feature of ANSI C (1989). Thus the library
+ itself provided no header file declaring them. Nevertheless, the BSD
+ sources included two different termcap.h header files over time.
o One was used internally by jove(1) from 4.3BSD onward. It delcared
global symbols for the termcap variables that it used.
- o The other appeared in 4.4BSD-Lite Release 2 (June 1995) as part of
- libedit (also known as the editline library). CSRG source history
+ o The other appeared in 4.4BSD-Lite Release 2 (June 1995) as part of
+ libedit (also known as the editline library). CSRG source history
shows that this was added in mid-1992. The libedit header file was
used internally as a convenience for compiling the editline
library. It declared function prototypes, but no global variables.
This header file was added to NetBSD's termcap library in mid-1994.
- Meanwhile, GNU termcap began development in 1990. Its first release
- (1.0) in 1991 included a termcap.h header. Its second (1.1) in
- September 1992 modified the header to use const for the function
- prototypes in the header where one would expect the parameters to be
+ Meanwhile, GNU termcap began development in 1990. Its first release
+ (1.0) in 1991 included a termcap.h header. Its second (1.1) in
+ September 1992 modified the header to use const for the function
+ prototypes in the header where one would expect the parameters to be
read-only. BSD termcap did not. The prototype for tputs also
- differed, but in that instance, it was libedit that differed from BSD
+ differed, but in that instance, it was libedit that differed from BSD
termcap.
- GNU termcap 1.3 was bundled with bash in mid-1993 to support the
+ GNU termcap 1.3 was bundled with bash(1) in mid-1993 to support the
readline(3) library.
- ncurses 1.8.1 (November 1993) provided a termcap.h file. It reflected
- influence from GNU termcap and emacs(1) (rather than jove(1)),
+ ncurses 1.8.1 (November 1993) provided a termcap.h file. It reflected
+ influence from GNU termcap and emacs(1) (rather than jove(1)),
providing the following interface:
o global symbols used by emacs,
@@ -351,43 +350,43 @@
o a prototype for tparam, a GNU termcap feature.
- Later (in mid-1996) the tparam function was removed from ncurses. Any
- two of the four implementations thus differ, and programs that intend
+ Later (in mid-1996) the tparam function was removed from ncurses. Any
+ two of the four implementations thus differ, and programs that intend
to work with all termcap library interfaces must account for that fact.
- If you call tgetstr to fetch ca or any other parameterized string
- capability, be aware that it is returned in terminfo notation, not the
- older and not-quite-compatible termcap notation. This does not cause
- problems if all you do with it is call tgoto or tparm, which both
- expand terminfo-style strings as terminfo does. (If ncurses is
- configured to support termcap,tgoto checks whether the string is term-
- info-style by looking for "%p" parameters or "<...>" delays, and
- invokes a termcap-style parser if the string appears not to use term-
- info syntax.)
-
- Because terminfo's syntax for padding in string capabilities differs
+ If you call tgetstr to fetch column_address (ch) or any other
+ parameterized string capability, be aware that it is returned in term-
+ info notation, not the older and not-quite-compatible termcap notation.
+ This does not cause problems if all you do with it is call tgoto or
+ tparm, which both expand terminfo-style strings as terminfo does. (If
+ ncurses is configured to support termcap,tgoto checks whether the
+ string is terminfo-style by looking for "%p" parameters or "<...>"
+ delays, and invokes a termcap-style parser if the string appears not to
+ use terminfo syntax.)
+
+ Because terminfo's syntax for padding in string capabilities differs
from termcap's, users can be surprised.
- otputs("50") in a terminfo system transmits "50" rather than busy-
+ otputs("50") in a terminfo system transmits "50" rather than busy-
waiting for 50 milliseconds.
- o However, if ncurses is configured to support termcap, it may also
+ o However, if ncurses is configured to support termcap, it may also
have been configured to support BSD-style padding.
- In that case, tputs inspects strings passed to it, looking for
+ In that case, tputs inspects strings passed to it, looking for
digits at the beginning of the string.
- tputs("50") in a termcap system may busy-wait for 50 milliseconds
+ tputs("50") in a termcap system may busy-wait for 50 milliseconds
rather than transmitting "50".
- termcap has nothing analogous to terminfo's sgr string. One
- consequence is that termcap applications assume that "me" (equivalent
- to terminfo's sgr0 capability) does not reset the alternate character
- set. ncurses checks for, and modifies the data shared with, the
- termcap interface to accommodate the latter's limitation in this
- respect.
+ termcap has nothing analogous to terminfo's set_attributes (sgr)
+ capability. One consequence is that termcap applications assume that
+ "me" (equivalent to terminfo's exit_attribute_mode (sgr0) capability)
+ does not reset the alternate character set. ncurses checks for, and
+ modifies the data shared with, the termcap interface to accommodate the
+ latter's limitation in this respect.