- The tic command translates a terminfo file from source format into com-
- piled format. The compiled format is necessary for use with the
+ The tic command translates a terminfo file from source format into
+ compiled format. The compiled format is necessary for use with the
library routines in ncurses(3x).
As described in term(5), the database may be either a directory tree
@@ -64,8 +65,8 @@
entry). The tic command writes only one type of entry, depending on
how it was built:
- o For directory trees, the top-level directory, e.g., /usr/share/ter-
- minfo, specifies the location of the database.
+ o For directory trees, the top-level directory, e.g.,
+ /usr/share/terminfo, specifies the location of the database.
o For hashed databases, a filename is needed. If the given file is
not found by that name, but can be found by adding the suffix
@@ -74,25 +75,25 @@
The default name for the hashed database is the same as the default
directory name (only adding a ".db" suffix).
- In either case (directory or hashed database), tic will create the con-
- tainer if it does not exist. For a directory, this would be the "ter-
- minfo" leaf, versus a "terminfo.db" file.
+ In either case (directory or hashed database), tic will create the
+ container if it does not exist. For a directory, this would be the
+ "terminfo" leaf, versus a "terminfo.db" file.
The results are normally placed in the system terminfo database
/usr/share/terminfo. The compiled terminal description can be placed
in a different terminfo database. There are two ways to achieve this:
o First, you may override the system default either by using the -o
- option, or by setting the variable TERMINFO in your shell environ-
- ment to a valid database location.
+ option, or by setting the variable TERMINFO in your shell
+ environment to a valid database location.
- o Secondly, if tic cannot write in /usr/share/terminfo or the loca-
- tion specified using your TERMINFO variable, it looks for the
+ o Secondly, if tic cannot write in /usr/share/terminfo or the
+ location specified using your TERMINFO variable, it looks for the
directory $HOME/.terminfo (or hashed database $HOME/.terminfo.db);
if that location exists, the entry is placed there.
- Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check in succes-
- sion
+ Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check in
+ succession
o a location specified with the TERMINFO environment variable,
@@ -100,82 +101,93 @@
o directories listed in the TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable,
- o a compiled-in list of directories (/usr/local/ncurses/share/ter-
- minfo:/usr/share/terminfo), and
+ o a compiled-in list of directories (/usr/share/terminfo), and
o the system terminfo database (/usr/share/terminfo).
+ The FetchingCompiledDescriptions section in the terminfo(5) manual
+ goes into further detail.
+
+
+
+ This is the same program as infotocap and captoinfo; usually those are
+ linked to, or copied from this program:
+
+ o When invoked as infotocap, tic sets the -I option.
+
+ o When invoked as captoinfo, tic sets the -C option.
+
-0 restricts the output to a single line
-1 restricts the output to a single column
- -a tells tic to retain commented-out capabilities rather than dis-
- carding them. Capabilities are commented by prefixing them with
- a period. This sets the -x option, because it treats the com-
- mented-out entries as user-defined names. If the source is
- termcap, accept the 2-character names required by version 6.
+ -a tells tic to retain commented-out capabilities rather than
+ discarding them. Capabilities are commented by prefixing them
+ with a period. This sets the -x option, because it treats the
+ commented-out entries as user-defined names. If the source is
+ termcap, accept the 2-character names required by version 6.
Otherwise these are ignored.
- -C Force source translation to termcap format. Note: this differs
- from the -C option of infocmp(1m) in that it does not merely
+ -C Force source translation to termcap format. Note: this differs
+ from the -C option of infocmp(1m) in that it does not merely
translate capability names, but also translates terminfo strings
- to termcap format. Capabilities that are not translatable are
- left in the entry under their terminfo names but commented out
- with two preceding dots. The actual format used incorporates
- some improvements for escaped characters from terminfo format.
+ to termcap format. Capabilities that are not translatable are
+ left in the entry under their terminfo names but commented out
+ with two preceding dots. The actual format used incorporates
+ some improvements for escaped characters from terminfo format.
For a stricter BSD-compatible translation, add the -K option.
- If this is combined with -c, tic makes additional checks to
- report cases where the terminfo values do not have an exact
+ If this is combined with -c, tic makes additional checks to
+ report cases where the terminfo values do not have an exact
equivalent in termcap form. For example:
- osgr usually will not convert, because termcap lacks the
- ability to work with more than two parameters, and because
- termcap lacks many of the arithmetic/logical operators used
+ osgr usually will not convert, because termcap lacks the
+ ability to work with more than two parameters, and because
+ termcap lacks many of the arithmetic/logical operators used
in terminfo.
- o capabilities with more than one delay or with delays before
+ o capabilities with more than one delay or with delays before
the end of the string will not convert completely.
- -c tells tic to only check file for errors, including syntax prob-
- lems and bad use-links. If you specify -C (-I) with this
- option, the code will print warnings about entries which, after
- use resolution, are more than 1023 (4096) bytes long. Due to a
+ -c tells tic to only check file for errors, including syntax
+ problems and bad use-links. If you specify -C (-I) with this
+ option, the code will print warnings about entries which, after
+ use resolution, are more than 1023 (4096) bytes long. Due to a
fixed buffer length in older termcap libraries, as well as buggy
- checking for the buffer length (and a documented limit in ter-
- minfo), these entries may cause core dumps with other implemen-
- tations.
+ checking for the buffer length (and a documented limit in
+ terminfo), these entries may cause core dumps with other
+ implementations.
- tic checks string capabilities to ensure that those with parame-
- ters will be valid expressions. It does this check only for the
- predefined string capabilities; those which are defined with the
- -x option are ignored.
+ tic checks string capabilities to ensure that those with
+ parameters will be valid expressions. It does this check only
+ for the predefined string capabilities; those which are defined
+ with the -x option are ignored.
- -D tells tic to print the database locations that it knows about,
+ -D tells tic to print the database locations that it knows about,
and exit. The first location shown is the one to which it would
- write compiled terminal descriptions. If tic is not able to
- find a writable database location according to the rules summa-
- rized above, it will print a diagnostic and exit with an error
- rather than printing a list of database locations.
+ write compiled terminal descriptions. If tic is not able to
+ find a writable database location according to the rules
+ summarized above, it will print a diagnostic and exit with an
+ error rather than printing a list of database locations.
-enames
- Limit writes and translations to the following comma-separated
- list of terminals. If any name or alias of a terminal matches
- one of the names in the list, the entry will be written or
+ Limit writes and translations to the following comma-separated
+ list of terminals. If any name or alias of a terminal matches
+ one of the names in the list, the entry will be written or
translated as normal. Otherwise no output will be generated for
- it. The option value is interpreted as a file containing the
- list if it contains a '/'. (Note: depending on how tic was com-
- piled, this option may require -I or -C.)
+ it. The option value is interpreted as a file containing the
+ list if it contains a '/'. (Note: depending on how tic was
+ compiled, this option may require -I or -C.)
- -f Display complex terminfo strings which contain
+ -f Display complex terminfo strings which contain
if/then/else/endif expressions indented for readability.
- -G Display constant literals in decimal form rather than their
+ -G Display constant literals in decimal form rather than their
character equivalents.
- -g Display constant character literals in quoted form rather than
+ -g Display constant character literals in quoted form rather than
their decimal equivalents.
-I Force source translation to terminfo format.
@@ -183,25 +195,25 @@
-K Suppress some longstanding ncurses extensions to termcap format,
e.g., "\s" for space.
- -L Force source translation to terminfo format using the long C
+ -L Force source translation to terminfo format using the long C
variable names listed in <term.h>
-N Disable smart defaults. Normally, when translating from termcap
- to terminfo, the compiler makes a number of assumptions about
- the defaults of string capabilities reset1_string, car-
- riage_return, cursor_left, cursor_down, scroll_forward, tab,
+ to terminfo, the compiler makes a number of assumptions about
+ the defaults of string capabilities reset1_string,
+ carriage_return, cursor_left, cursor_down, scroll_forward, tab,
newline, key_backspace, key_left, and key_down, then attempts to
- use obsolete termcap capabilities to deduce correct values. It
+ use obsolete termcap capabilities to deduce correct values. It
also normally suppresses output of obsolete termcap capabilities
- such as bs. This option forces a more literal translation that
+ such as bs. This option forces a more literal translation that
also preserves the obsolete capabilities.
- -odir Write compiled entries to given database location. Overrides
+ -odir Write compiled entries to given database location. Overrides
the TERMINFO environment variable.
- -Qn Rather than show source in terminfo (text) format, print the
- compiled (binary) format in hexadecimal or base64 form, depend-
- ing on the option's value:
+ -Qn Rather than show source in terminfo (text) format, print the
+ compiled (binary) format in hexadecimal or base64 form,
+ depending on the option's value:
1 hexadecimal
@@ -213,35 +225,38 @@
source.
-Rsubset
- Restrict output to a given subset. This option is for use with
- archaic versions of terminfo like those on SVr1, Ultrix, or
- HP/UX that do not support the full set of SVR4/XSI Curses ter-
- minfo; and outright broken ports like AIX 3.x that have their
- own extensions incompatible with SVr4/XSI. Available subsets
- are "SVr1", "Ultrix", "HP", "BSD" and "AIX"; see terminfo(5) for
- details.
-
- -r Force entry resolution (so there are no remaining tc capabili-
- ties) even when doing translation to termcap format. This may
- be needed if you are preparing a termcap file for a termcap
- library (such as GNU termcap through version 1.3 or BSD termcap
- through 4.3BSD) that does not handle multiple tc capabilities
- per entry.
-
- -s Summarize the compile by showing the database location into
- which entries are written, and the number of entries which are
+ Restrict output to a given subset. This option is for use with
+ archaic versions of terminfo like those on SVr1, Ultrix, or HP-
+ UX that do not support the full set of SVR4/XSI Curses terminfo;
+ and outright broken ports like AIX 3.x that have their own
+ extensions incompatible with SVr4/XSI.
+
+ Available subsets are
+ "SVr1", "Ultrix", "HP", "BSD", and "AIX"
+
+ See terminfo(5) for details.
+
+ -r Force entry resolution (so there are no remaining tc
+ capabilities) even when doing translation to termcap format.
+ This may be needed if you are preparing a termcap file for a
+ termcap library (such as GNU termcap through version 1.3 or BSD
+ termcap through 4.3BSD) that does not handle multiple tc
+ capabilities per entry.
+
+ -s Summarize the compile by showing the database location into
+ which entries are written, and the number of entries which are
compiled.
- -T eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text. This is
- mainly useful for testing and analysis, since the compiled
- descriptions are limited (e.g., 1023 for termcap, 4096 for ter-
- minfo).
+ -T eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text. This is
+ mainly useful for testing and analysis, since the compiled
+ descriptions are limited (e.g., 1023 for termcap, 4096 for
+ terminfo).
- -t tells tic to discard commented-out capabilities. Normally when
- translating from terminfo to termcap, untranslatable capabili-
- ties are commented-out.
+ -t tells tic to discard commented-out capabilities. Normally when
+ translating from terminfo to termcap, untranslatable
+ capabilities are commented-out.
- -U tells tic to not post-process the data after parsing the source
+ -U tells tic to not post-process the data after parsing the source
file. Normally, it infers data which is commonly missing in older
terminfo data, or in termcaps.
@@ -251,44 +266,53 @@
-vn specifies that (verbose) output be written to standard error trace
information showing tic's progress.
- The optional parameter n is a number from 1 to 10, inclusive,
- indicating the desired level of detail of information. If ncurses
- is built without tracing support, the optional parameter is
- ignored. If n is omitted, the default level is 1. If n is speci-
- fied and greater than 1, the level of detail is increased.
+ The optional parameter n is a number from 1 to 9, inclusive,
+ indicating the desired level of detail of information.
+
+ o If ncurses is built without tracing support, the optional
+ parameter is ignored.
+
+ o If n is omitted, the default level is 1.
+
+ o If n is specified and greater than 1, the level of detail is
+ increased, and the output is written (with tracing
+ information) to the "trace" file.
The debug flag levels are as follows:
- 1 Names of files created and linked
+ 1 Names of files created and linked
- 2 Information related to the "use" facility
+ 2 Information related to the "use" facility
- 3 Statistics from the hashing algorithm
+ 3 Statistics from the hashing algorithm
- 5 String-table memory allocations
+ 4 Details of extended capabilities
- 7 Entries into the string-table
+ 5 (unused)
- 8 List of tokens encountered by scanner
+ 6 (unused)
- 9 All values computed in construction of the hash table
+ 7 Entries into the string-table
- If the debug level n is not given, it is taken to be one.
+ 8 List of tokens encountered by scanner
- -W By itself, the -w option will not force long strings to be
+ 9 All values computed in construction of the hash table
+
+ -W By itself, the -w option will not force long strings to be
wrapped. Use the -W option to do this.
- If you specify both -f and -W options, the latter is ignored when
+ If you specify both -f and -W options, the latter is ignored when
-f has already split the line.
-wn specifies the width of the output. The parameter is optional. If
it is omitted, it defaults to 60.
- -x Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined. That is, if you sup-
- ply a capability name which tic does not recognize, it will infer
- its type (boolean, number or string) from the syntax and make an
- extended table entry for that. User-defined capability strings
- whose name begins with "k" are treated as function keys.
+ -x Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined (see user_caps(5)).
+ That is, if you supply a capability name which tic does not
+ recognize, it will infer its type (boolean, number or string) from
+ the syntax and make an extended table entry for that. User-
+ defined capability strings whose name begins with "k" are treated
+ as function keys.
+ System V Release 2 provided a tic utility. It accepted a single
+ option: -v (optionally followed by a number). According to Ross
+ Ridge's comment in mytinfo, this version of tic was unable to represent
+ cancelled capabilities.
+
+ System V Release 3 provided a different tic utility, written by Pavel
+ Curtis, (originally named "compile" in pcurses). This added an option
+ -c 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 pcurses. While the program
+ itself was changed little as development continued with System V
+ Release 4, the table of capabilities grew from 180 (pcurses) to 464
+ (Solaris).
+
+ In early development of ncurses (1993), Zeyd Ben-Halim used the table
+ from mytinfo to extend the pcurses 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 memory_lock_above and memory_unlock (see
+ user_caps(5)).
+
+ Eric Raymond incorporated parts of mytinfo 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.
+
+ In 1999, Thomas Dickey added the -x option to support user-defined
+ capabilities.
+
+ In 2010, Roy Marples provided a tic program and terminfo library for
+ NetBSD. That implementation adapts several features from ncurses,
+ including tic's -x option.
+
+ The -c option tells tic to check for problems in the terminfo source
+ file. Continued development provides additional checks:
+
+ opcurses had 8 warnings
+
+ o ncurses in 1996 had 16 warnings
+
+ o Solaris (SVr4) curses has 28 warnings
+
+ o NetBSD tic in 2019 has 19 warnings.
+
+ o ncurses in 2019 has 96 warnings
+
+ The checking done in ncurses' tic 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.
+
+
+
+ X/Open Curses, Issue 7 (2009) provides a brief description of tic. It
+ lists one option: -c. The omission of -v is unexpected. The change
+ history states that the description is derived from True64 UNIX.
+ According to its manual pages, that system also supported the -v
+ option.
+
+ Shortly after Issue 7 was released, Tru64 was discontinued. As of
+ 2019, the surviving implementations of tic are SVr4 (AIX, HP-UX and
+ Solaris), ncurses and NetBSD curses. The SVr4 tic programs all support
+ the -v option. The NetBSD tic program follows X/Open's documentation,
+ omitting the -v option.
+
+ The X/Open rationale states that some implementations of tic read
+ terminal descriptions from the standard input if the file 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.
+
+
+
There is some evidence that historic tic implementations treated
description fields with no whitespace in them as additional aliases or
- short names. This tic does not do that, but it does warn when descrip-
- tion fields may be treated that way and check them for dangerous char-
- acters.
+ short names. This tic does not do that, but it does warn when
+ description fields may be treated that way and check them for dangerous
+ characters.
-
Unlike the SVr4 tic command, this implementation can actually compile
termcap sources. In fact, entries in terminfo and termcap syntax can
be mixed in a single source file. See terminfo(5) for the list of
termcap names taken to be equivalent to terminfo names.
The SVr4 manual pages are not clear on the resolution rules for use
- capabilities. This implementation of tic will find use targets any-
- where in the source file, or anywhere in the file tree rooted at TER-
- MINFO (if TERMINFO is defined), or in the user's $HOME/.terminfo data-
- base (if it exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file tree of
- compiled entries.
+ capabilities. This implementation of tic will find use targets
+ anywhere in the source file, or anywhere in the file tree rooted at
+ TERMINFO (if TERMINFO is defined), or in the user's $HOME/.terminfo
+ database (if it exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file
+ tree of compiled entries.
The error messages from this tic have the same format as GNU C error
messages, and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's compile facility.
- The -0, -1, -C, -G, -I, -N, -R, -T, -V, -a, -e, -f, -g, -o, -r, -s, -t
- and -x options are not supported under SVr4. The SVr4 -c mode does not
- report bad use links.
+ Aside from -c and -v, options are not portable:
- System V does not compile entries to or read entries from your
- $HOME/.terminfo database unless TERMINFO is explicitly set to it.
+ o Most of tic's options are not supported by SVr4 tic:
+ -0-1-C-G-I-N-R-T-V-a-e-f-g-o-r-s-t-x
-
- /usr/share/terminfo/?/*
- Compiled terminal description database.
+ o The NetBSD tic supports a few of the ncurses options
+ -a-o-x
+
+ and adds -S (a feature which does the same thing as infocmp's -e
+ and -E options).
+
+ The SVr4 -c mode does not report bad "use=" links.
+
+ System V does not compile entries to or read entries from your
+ $HOME/.terminfo database unless TERMINFO is explicitly set to it.
-