ncurses 5.9 - patch 20120303

[ncurses.git] / man / terminfo.tail

diff --git a/man/terminfo.tail b/man/terminfo.tail
index 1f4dab54443cbfc36432adb1f0916c83568dda82..26aa6856b89d349fb2bb1a6c62f7d043840fab54 100644 (file)
--- a/man/terminfo.tail
+++ b/man/terminfo.tail
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.\" $Id: terminfo.tail,v 1.52 2010/10/02 23:40:29 tom Exp $
+.\" $Id: terminfo.tail,v 1.57 2012/03/01 12:02:54 tom Exp $
 .\" Beginning of terminfo.tail file
 .\" This file is part of ncurses.
 .\" See "terminfo.head" for copyright.
@@ -75,14 +75,29 @@ map to an \s-1ESCAPE\s0 character,
 \fB^x\fR maps to a control-x for any appropriate x, and the sequences
 \fB\en \el \er \et \eb \ef \es\fR give
 a newline, line-feed, return, tab, backspace, form-feed, and space.
-Other escapes include \fB\e^\fR for \fB^\fR,
+Other escapes include
+.bP
+\fB\e^\fR for \fB^\fR,
+.bP
 \fB\e\e\fR for \fB\e\fR,
+.bP
 \fB\e\fR, for comma,
+.bP
 \fB\e:\fR for \fB:\fR,
+.bP
 and \fB\e0\fR for null.
-(\fB\e0\fR will produce \e200, which does not terminate a string but behaves
+.IP
+\fB\e0\fR will produce \e200, which does not terminate a string but behaves
 as a null character on most terminals, providing CS7 is specified.
-See stty(1).)
+See stty(1).
+.IP
+The reason for this quirk is to maintain binary compatibility of the
+compiled terminfo files with other implementations,
+e.g., the SVr4 systems, which document this.
+Compiled terminfo files use null-terminated strings, with no lengths.
+Modifying this would require a new binary format, 
+which would not work with other implementations.
+.PP
 Finally, characters may be given as three octal digits after a \fB\e\fR.
 .PP
 A delay in milliseconds may appear anywhere in a string capability, enclosed in
@@ -125,8 +140,8 @@ will instead look in the directory \fB$HOME/.terminfo\fR
 for a compiled description.
 If it fails to find one there, and the environment variable TERMINFO_DIRS is
 set, it will interpret the contents of that variable as a list of colon-
-separated directories to be searched (an empty entry is interpreted as a
-command to search \fI\*d\fR).
+separated directories (or database files) to be searched
+(an empty entry is interpreted as a command to search \fI\*d\fR).
 If no description is found in any of the
 TERMINFO_DIRS directories, the fetch fails.
 .PP
@@ -397,7 +412,7 @@ It is possible to form else-if's a la Algol 68:
 .IP
 where c\di\u are conditions, b\di\u are bodies.
 .IP
-Use the \fB\-f\fP option of \fBtic\fP or \fB@INFOCMP@\fP to see
+Use the \fB\-f\fP option of \fB@TIC@\fP or \fB@INFOCMP@\fP to see
 the structure of if-then-else's.
 Some strings, e.g., \fBsgr\fP can be very complicated when written
 on one line.
@@ -593,6 +608,7 @@ Other terminals, such as the Concept 100 and the Perkin Elmer Owl, make
 a distinction between typed and untyped blanks on the screen, shifting
 upon an insert or delete only to an untyped blank on the screen which is
 either eliminated, or expanded to two untyped blanks.
+.PP
 You can determine the
 kind of terminal you have by clearing the screen and then typing
 text separated by cursor motions.
@@ -608,6 +624,7 @@ shifts over to the \*(lqdef\*(rq which then move together around the end of the
 current line and onto the next as you insert, you have the second type of
 terminal, and should give the capability \fBin\fR, which stands for
 \*(lqinsert null\*(rq.
+.PP
 While these are two logically separate attributes (one line versus multi-line
 insert mode, and special treatment of untyped spaces) we have seen no
 terminals whose insert mode cannot be described with the single attribute.
@@ -974,7 +991,7 @@ the numeric parameter
 .B it
 is given, showing the number of spaces the tabs are set to.
 This is normally used by the
-.IR tset
+.IR @TSET@
 command to determine whether to set the mode for hardware tab expansion,
 and whether to set the tab stops.
 If the terminal has tab stops that can be saved in non-volatile memory,
@@ -1570,19 +1587,15 @@ length of the entry as it exists in /etc/termcap, minus the
 backslash-newline pairs, which \fBtgetent()\fP strips out while reading it.
 Some termcap libraries strip off the final newline, too (GNU termcap does not).
 Now suppose:
-.TP 5
-*
+.bP
 a termcap entry before expansion is more than 1023 bytes long,
-.TP 5
-*
+.bP
 and the application has only allocated a 1k buffer,
-.TP 5
-*
+.bP
 and the termcap library (like the one in BSD/OS 1.1 and GNU) reads
 the whole entry into the buffer, no matter what its length, to see
 if it is the entry it wants,
-.TP 5
-*
+.bP
 and \fBtgetent()\fP is searching for a terminal type that either is the
 long entry, appears in the termcap file after the long entry, or
 does not appear in the file at all (so that \fBtgetent()\fP has to search
@@ -1696,9 +1709,3 @@ files containing terminal descriptions
 .SH AUTHORS
 Zeyd M. Ben-Halim, Eric S. Raymond, Thomas E. Dickey.
 Based on pcurses by Pavel Curtis.
-.\"#
-.\"# The following sets edit modes for GNU EMACS
-.\"# Local Variables:
-.\"# mode:nroff
-.\"# fill-column:79
-.\"# End: