- Total compiled entries cannot exceed 4096 bytes. The name field cannot
- exceed 512 bytes. Terminal names exceeding the maximum alias length
- (32 characters on systems with long filenames, 14 characters otherwise)
- will be truncated to the maximum alias length and a warning message
- will be printed.
-
-
-</PRE><H2><a name="h2-HISTORY">HISTORY</a></H2><PRE>
- System V Release 2 provided a <STRONG>tic</STRONG> utility. It accepted a single
- option: <STRONG>-v</STRONG> (optionally followed by a number). According to Ross
- Ridge's comment in <EM>mytinfo</EM>, this version of <STRONG>tic</STRONG> was unable to represent
- cancelled capabilities.
-
- System V Release 3 provided a different <STRONG>tic</STRONG> utility, written by Pavel
- Curtis, (originally named "compile" in <EM>pcurses</EM>). This added an option
- <STRONG>-c</STRONG> 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 <EM>pcurses</EM>. While the program
- itself was changed little as development continued with System V
- Release 4, the table of capabilities grew from 180 (<EM>pcurses</EM>) to 464
- (Solaris).
-
- In early development of ncurses (1993), Zeyd Ben-Halim used the table
- from <EM>mytinfo</EM> to extend the <EM>pcurses</EM> 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 <STRONG>memory_lock_above</STRONG> and <STRONG>memory_unlock</STRONG> (see
- <STRONG><A HREF="user_caps.5.html">user_caps(5)</A></STRONG>).
-
- Eric Raymond incorporated parts of <EM>mytinfo</EM> 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 <STRONG>-x</STRONG> option to support user-defined
- capabilities.
-
- In 2010, Roy Marples provided a <STRONG>tic</STRONG> program and terminfo library for
- NetBSD. That implementation adapts several features from ncurses,
- including <STRONG>tic</STRONG>'s <STRONG>-x</STRONG> option.
-
- The <STRONG>-c</STRONG> option tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to check for problems in the terminfo source
- file. Continued development provides additional checks:
-
- <STRONG>o</STRONG> <EM>pcurses</EM> had 8 warnings
-
- <STRONG>o</STRONG> ncurses in 1996 had 16 warnings
-
- <STRONG>o</STRONG> Solaris (SVr4) curses has 28 warnings
-
- <STRONG>o</STRONG> NetBSD tic in 2019 has 19 warnings.
-
- <STRONG>o</STRONG> ncurses in 2019 has 96 warnings
-
- The checking done in ncurses' <STRONG>tic</STRONG> 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.