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29 * @Id: tic.1m,v 1.61 2015/09/05 20:45:49 tom Exp @
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41 <H1 class="no-header">tic 1m</H1>
43 <STRONG><A HREF="tic.1m.html">tic(1m)</A></STRONG> <STRONG><A HREF="tic.1m.html">tic(1m)</A></STRONG>
49 <H2><a name="h2-NAME">NAME</a></H2><PRE>
50 <STRONG>tic</STRONG> - the <EM>terminfo</EM> entry-description compiler
54 <H2><a name="h2-SYNOPSIS">SYNOPSIS</a></H2><PRE>
55 <STRONG>tic</STRONG> [<STRONG>-01CDGIKLNTUVacfgqrstx</STRONG>] [<STRONG>-e</STRONG> <EM>names</EM>] [<STRONG>-o</STRONG> <EM>dir</EM>] [<STRONG>-Q</STRONG>[<EM>n</EM>]]
56 [<STRONG>-R</STRONG> <EM>subset</EM>] [<STRONG>-v</STRONG>[<EM>n</EM>]] [<STRONG>-w</STRONG>[<EM>n</EM>]] <EM>file</EM>
60 <H2><a name="h2-DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a></H2><PRE>
61 The <STRONG>tic</STRONG> command translates a <STRONG>terminfo</STRONG> file from source
62 format into compiled format. The compiled format is nec-
63 essary for use with the library routines in <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">ncurses(3x)</A></STRONG>.
65 As described in <STRONG><A HREF="term.5.html">term(5)</A></STRONG>, the database may be either a
66 directory tree (one file per terminal entry) or a hashed
67 database (one record per entry). The <STRONG>tic</STRONG> command writes
68 only one type of entry, depending on how it was built:
70 <STRONG>o</STRONG> For directory trees, the top-level directory, e.g.,
71 /usr/share/terminfo, specifies the location of the
74 <STRONG>o</STRONG> For hashed databases, a filename is needed. If the
75 given file is not found by that name, but can be found
76 by adding the suffix ".db", then that is used.
78 The default name for the hashed database is the same
79 as the default directory name (only adding a ".db"
82 In either case (directory or hashed database), <STRONG>tic</STRONG> will
83 create the container if it does not exist. For a direc-
84 tory, this would be the "terminfo" leaf, versus a "ter-
87 The results are normally placed in the system terminfo
88 database <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG>. The compiled terminal
89 description can be placed in a different terminfo data-
90 base. There are two ways to achieve this:
92 <STRONG>o</STRONG> First, you may override the system default either by
93 using the <STRONG>-o</STRONG> option, or by setting the variable <STRONG>TER-</STRONG>
94 <STRONG>MINFO</STRONG> in your shell environment to a valid database
97 <STRONG>o</STRONG> Secondly, if <STRONG>tic</STRONG> cannot write in <EM>/usr/share/terminfo</EM>
98 or the location specified using your TERMINFO vari-
99 able, it looks for the directory <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM> (or
100 hashed database <EM>$HOME/.terminfo.db)</EM>; if that location
101 exists, the entry is placed there.
103 Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check
106 <STRONG>o</STRONG> a location specified with the TERMINFO environment
109 <STRONG>o</STRONG> <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM>,
111 <STRONG>o</STRONG> directories listed in the TERMINFO_DIRS environment
114 <STRONG>o</STRONG> a compiled-in list of directories
115 (/usr/local/ncurses/share/terminfo:/usr/share/ter-
118 <STRONG>o</STRONG> the system terminfo database (<EM>/usr/share/terminfo</EM>).
122 <H3><a name="h3-OPTIONS">OPTIONS</a></H3><PRE>
123 <STRONG>-0</STRONG> restricts the output to a single line
125 <STRONG>-1</STRONG> restricts the output to a single column
127 <STRONG>-a</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to retain commented-out capabilities
128 rather than discarding them. Capabilities are com-
129 mented by prefixing them with a period. This sets
130 the <STRONG>-x</STRONG> option, because it treats the commented-out
131 entries as user-defined names. If the source is
132 termcap, accept the 2-character names required by
133 version 6. Otherwise these are ignored.
135 <STRONG>-C</STRONG> Force source translation to termcap format. Note:
136 this differs from the <STRONG>-C</STRONG> option of <STRONG><A HREF="infocmp.1m.html">infocmp(1m)</A></STRONG> in
137 that it does not merely translate capability names,
138 but also translates terminfo strings to termcap
139 format. Capabilities that are not translatable are
140 left in the entry under their terminfo names but
141 commented out with two preceding dots. The actual
142 format used incorporates some improvements for
143 escaped characters from terminfo format. For a
144 stricter BSD-compatible translation, add the <STRONG>-K</STRONG>
147 If this is combined with <STRONG>-c</STRONG>, <STRONG>tic</STRONG> makes additional
148 checks to report cases where the terminfo values do
149 not have an exact equivalent in termcap form. For
152 <STRONG>o</STRONG> <STRONG>sgr</STRONG> usually will not convert, because termcap
153 lacks the ability to work with more than two
154 parameters, and because termcap lacks many of
155 the arithmetic/logical operators used in ter-
158 <STRONG>o</STRONG> capabilities with more than one delay or with
159 delays before the end of the string will not
162 <STRONG>-c</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to only check <EM>file</EM> for errors, including
163 syntax problems and bad use links. If you specify
164 <STRONG>-C</STRONG> (<STRONG>-I</STRONG>) with this option, the code will print warn-
165 ings about entries which, after use resolution, are
166 more than 1023 (4096) bytes long. Due to a fixed
167 buffer length in older termcap libraries, as well
168 as buggy checking for the buffer length (and a doc-
169 umented limit in terminfo), these entries may cause
170 core dumps with other implementations.
172 <STRONG>tic</STRONG> checks string capabilities to ensure that those
173 with parameters will be valid expressions. It does
174 this check only for the predefined string capabili-
175 ties; those which are defined with the <STRONG>-x</STRONG> option
178 <STRONG>-D</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to print the database locations that it
179 knows about, and exit. The first location shown is
180 the one to which it would write compiled terminal
181 descriptions. If <STRONG>tic</STRONG> is not able to find a
182 writable database location according to the rules
183 summarized above, it will print a diagnostic and
184 exit with an error rather than printing a list of
187 <STRONG>-e</STRONG> <EM>names</EM>
188 Limit writes and translations to the following
189 comma-separated list of terminals. If any name or
190 alias of a terminal matches one of the names in the
191 list, the entry will be written or translated as
192 normal. Otherwise no output will be generated for
193 it. The option value is interpreted as a file con-
194 taining the list if it contains a '/'. (Note:
195 depending on how tic was compiled, this option may
196 require <STRONG>-I</STRONG> or <STRONG>-C</STRONG>.)
198 <STRONG>-f</STRONG> Display complex terminfo strings which contain
199 if/then/else/endif expressions indented for read-
202 <STRONG>-G</STRONG> Display constant literals in decimal form rather
203 than their character equivalents.
205 <STRONG>-g</STRONG> Display constant character literals in quoted form
206 rather than their decimal equivalents.
208 <STRONG>-I</STRONG> Force source translation to terminfo format.
210 <STRONG>-K</STRONG> Suppress some longstanding ncurses extensions to
211 termcap format, e.g., "\s" for space.
213 <STRONG>-L</STRONG> Force source translation to terminfo format using
214 the long C variable names listed in <<STRONG>term.h</STRONG>>
216 <STRONG>-N</STRONG> Disable smart defaults. Normally, when translating
217 from termcap to terminfo, the compiler makes a num-
218 ber of assumptions about the defaults of string
219 capabilities <STRONG>reset1_string</STRONG>, <STRONG>carriage_return</STRONG>, <STRONG>cur-</STRONG>
220 <STRONG>sor_left</STRONG>, <STRONG>cursor_down</STRONG>, <STRONG>scroll_forward</STRONG>, <STRONG>tab</STRONG>, <STRONG>new-</STRONG>
221 <STRONG>line</STRONG>, <STRONG>key_backspace</STRONG>, <STRONG>key_left</STRONG>, and <STRONG>key_down</STRONG>, then
222 attempts to use obsolete termcap capabilities to
223 deduce correct values. It also normally suppresses
224 output of obsolete termcap capabilities such as <STRONG>bs</STRONG>.
225 This option forces a more literal translation that
226 also preserves the obsolete capabilities.
228 <STRONG>-o</STRONG><EM>dir</EM> Write compiled entries to given database location.
229 Overrides the TERMINFO environment variable.
231 <STRONG>-Q</STRONG><EM>n</EM> Rather than show source in terminfo (text) format,
232 print the compiled (binary) format in hexadecimal
233 or base64 form, depending on the option's value:
239 3 hexadecimal and base64
241 <STRONG>-q</STRONG> Suppress comments and blank lines when showing
244 <STRONG>-R</STRONG><EM>subset</EM>
245 Restrict output to a given subset. This option is
246 for use with archaic versions of terminfo like
247 those on SVr1, Ultrix, or HP/UX that do not support
248 the full set of SVR4/XSI Curses terminfo; and out-
249 right broken ports like AIX 3.x that have their own
250 extensions incompatible with SVr4/XSI. Available
251 subsets are "SVr1", "Ultrix", "HP", "BSD" and
252 "AIX"; see <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> for details.
254 <STRONG>-r</STRONG> Force entry resolution (so there are no remaining
255 tc capabilities) even when doing translation to
256 termcap format. This may be needed if you are pre-
257 paring a termcap file for a termcap library (such
258 as GNU termcap through version 1.3 or BSD termcap
259 through 4.3BSD) that does not handle multiple tc
260 capabilities per entry.
262 <STRONG>-s</STRONG> Summarize the compile by showing the database loca-
263 tion into which entries are written, and the number
264 of entries which are compiled.
266 <STRONG>-T</STRONG> eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text.
267 This is mainly useful for testing and analysis,
268 since the compiled descriptions are limited (e.g.,
269 1023 for termcap, 4096 for terminfo).
271 <STRONG>-t</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to discard commented-out capabilities.
272 Normally when translating from terminfo to termcap,
273 untranslatable capabilities are commented-out.
275 <STRONG>-U</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to not post-process the data after parsing
276 the source file. Normally, it infers data which is
277 commonly missing in older terminfo data, or in term-
280 <STRONG>-V</STRONG> reports the version of ncurses which was used in this
283 <STRONG>-v</STRONG><EM>n</EM> specifies that (verbose) output be written to stan-
284 dard error trace information showing <STRONG>tic</STRONG>'s progress.
285 The optional parameter <EM>n</EM> is a number from 1 to 10,
286 inclusive, indicating the desired level of detail of
287 information. If <EM>n</EM> is omitted, the default level is
288 1. If <EM>n</EM> is specified and greater than 1, the level
289 of detail is increased.
291 The debug flag levels are as follows:
293 1 Names of files created and linked
295 2 Information related to the "use" facility
297 3 Statistics from the hashing algorithm
299 5 String-table memory allocations
301 7 Entries into the string-table
303 8 List of tokens encountered by scanner
305 9 All values computed in construction of the
308 If the debug level <EM>n</EM> is not given, it is taken to be
311 <STRONG>-w</STRONG><EM>n</EM> specifies the width of the output. The parameter is
312 optional. If it is omitted, it defaults to 60.
314 <STRONG>-x</STRONG> Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined. That is,
315 if you supply a capability name which <STRONG>tic</STRONG> does not
316 recognize, it will infer its type (boolean, number or
317 string) from the syntax and make an extended table
318 entry for that. User-defined capability strings
319 whose name begins with "k" are treated as function
324 <H3><a name="h3-PARAMETERS">PARAMETERS</a></H3><PRE>
325 <EM>file</EM> contains one or more <STRONG>terminfo</STRONG> terminal descriptions
326 in source format [see <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>]. Each descrip-
327 tion in the file describes the capabilities of a
330 If <EM>file</EM> is "-", then the data is read from the
331 standard input. The <EM>file</EM> parameter may also be the
332 path of a character-device.
336 <H3><a name="h3-PROCESSING">PROCESSING</a></H3><PRE>
337 All but one of the capabilities recognized by <STRONG>tic</STRONG> are doc-
338 umented in <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>. The exception is the <STRONG>use</STRONG> capabil-
341 When a <STRONG>use</STRONG>=<EM>entry</EM>-<EM>name</EM> field is discovered in a terminal
342 entry currently being compiled, <STRONG>tic</STRONG> reads in the binary
343 from <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG> to complete the entry. (Entries
344 created from <EM>file</EM> will be used first. <STRONG>tic</STRONG> duplicates the
345 capabilities in <EM>entry</EM>-<EM>name</EM> for the current entry, with the
346 exception of those capabilities that explicitly are
347 defined in the current entry.
349 When an entry, e.g., <STRONG>entry_name_1</STRONG>, contains a
350 <STRONG>use=</STRONG><EM>entry</EM>_<EM>name</EM>_<EM>2</EM> field, any canceled capabilities in
351 <EM>entry</EM>_<EM>name</EM>_<EM>2</EM> must also appear in <STRONG>entry_name_1</STRONG> before <STRONG>use=</STRONG>
352 for these capabilities to be canceled in <STRONG>entry_name_1</STRONG>.
354 Total compiled entries cannot exceed 4096 bytes. The name
355 field cannot exceed 512 bytes. Terminal names exceeding
356 the maximum alias length (32 characters on systems with
357 long filenames, 14 characters otherwise) will be truncated
358 to the maximum alias length and a warning message will be
363 <H2><a name="h2-COMPATIBILITY">COMPATIBILITY</a></H2><PRE>
364 There is some evidence that historic <STRONG>tic</STRONG> implementations
365 treated description fields with no whitespace in them as
366 additional aliases or short names. This <STRONG>tic</STRONG> does not do
367 that, but it does warn when description fields may be
368 treated that way and check them for dangerous characters.
372 <H2><a name="h2-EXTENSIONS">EXTENSIONS</a></H2><PRE>
373 Unlike the SVr4 <STRONG>tic</STRONG> command, this implementation can actu-
374 ally compile termcap sources. In fact, entries in ter-
375 minfo and termcap syntax can be mixed in a single source
376 file. See <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> for the list of termcap names taken
377 to be equivalent to terminfo names.
379 The SVr4 manual pages are not clear on the resolution
380 rules for <STRONG>use</STRONG> capabilities. This implementation of <STRONG>tic</STRONG>
381 will find <STRONG>use</STRONG> targets anywhere in the source file, or any-
382 where in the file tree rooted at <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> (if <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> is
383 defined), or in the user's <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM> database (if it
384 exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file tree
387 The error messages from this <STRONG>tic</STRONG> have the same format as
388 GNU C error messages, and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's
391 The <STRONG>-0</STRONG>, <STRONG>-1</STRONG>, <STRONG>-C</STRONG>, <STRONG>-G</STRONG>, <STRONG>-I</STRONG>, <STRONG>-N</STRONG>, <STRONG>-R</STRONG>, <STRONG>-T</STRONG>, <STRONG>-V</STRONG>, <STRONG>-a</STRONG>, <STRONG>-e</STRONG>, <STRONG>-f</STRONG>, <STRONG>-g</STRONG>,
392 <STRONG>-o</STRONG>, <STRONG>-r</STRONG>, <STRONG>-s</STRONG>, <STRONG>-t</STRONG> and <STRONG>-x</STRONG> options are not supported under
393 SVr4. The SVr4 <STRONG>-c</STRONG> mode does not report bad use links.
395 System V does not compile entries to or read entries from
396 your <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM> database unless TERMINFO is explic-
401 <H2><a name="h2-FILES">FILES</a></H2><PRE>
402 <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo/?/*</STRONG>
403 Compiled terminal description database.
407 <H2><a name="h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></H2><PRE>
408 <STRONG><A HREF="infocmp.1m.html">infocmp(1m)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="captoinfo.1m.html">captoinfo(1m)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="infotocap.1m.html">infotocap(1m)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="toe.1m.html">toe(1m)</A></STRONG>,
409 <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">curses(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="term.5.html">term(5)</A></STRONG>. <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>.
411 This describes <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> version 6.0 (patch 20150926).
415 <H2><a name="h2-AUTHOR">AUTHOR</a></H2><PRE>
416 Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and
417 Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
421 <STRONG><A HREF="tic.1m.html">tic(1m)</A></STRONG>
425 <li><a href="#h2-NAME">NAME</a></li>
426 <li><a href="#h2-SYNOPSIS">SYNOPSIS</a></li>
427 <li><a href="#h2-DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a>
429 <li><a href="#h3-OPTIONS">OPTIONS</a></li>
430 <li><a href="#h3-PARAMETERS">PARAMETERS</a></li>
431 <li><a href="#h3-PROCESSING">PROCESSING</a></li>
434 <li><a href="#h2-COMPATIBILITY">COMPATIBILITY</a></li>
435 <li><a href="#h2-EXTENSIONS">EXTENSIONS</a></li>
436 <li><a href="#h2-FILES">FILES</a></li>
437 <li><a href="#h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></li>
438 <li><a href="#h2-AUTHOR">AUTHOR</a></li>