+ <EM>IEEE</EM> <EM>Std</EM> <EM>1003.1/The</EM> <EM>Open</EM> <EM>Group</EM> <EM>Base</EM> <EM>Specifications</EM> <EM>Issue</EM> <EM>7</EM>
+ (POSIX.1-2008) describes a <STRONG>tabs</STRONG> utility. However
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> This standard describes a <STRONG>+m</STRONG> option, to set a terminal's left-mar-
+ gin. Very few of the entries in the terminal database provide the
+ <STRONG>smgl</STRONG> (<STRONG>set_left_margin</STRONG>) or <STRONG>smglp</STRONG> (<STRONG>set_left_margin_parm</STRONG>) capability
+ needed to support the feature.
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> There is no counterpart in X/Open Curses Issue 7 for this utility,
+ unlike <STRONG>tput(1)</STRONG>.
+
+ The <STRONG>-d</STRONG> (debug) and <STRONG>-n</STRONG> (no-op) options are extensions not provided by
+ other implementations.
+
+ A <STRONG>tabs</STRONG> utility appeared in PWB/Unix 1.0 (1977). There was a reduced
+ version of the <STRONG>tabs</STRONG> utility in Unix 7th edition and in 3BSD (1979).
+ The latter supported a single "-n" option (to cause the first tab stop
+ to be set on the left margin). That option is not documented by POSIX.
+
+ The PWB/Unix <STRONG>tabs</STRONG> utility, which was included in System III (1980),
+ used built-in tables rather than the terminal database, to support a
+ half-dozen terminal types. It also had built-in logic to support the
+ left-margin, as well as a feature for copying the tab settings from a
+ file.
+
+ Later versions of Unix, e.g., SVr4, added support for the terminal
+ database, but kept the tables, as a fallback. In an earlier develop-
+ ment effort, the tab-stop initialization provided by <STRONG>tset</STRONG> (1982) and
+ incorporated into <STRONG>tput</STRONG> uses the terminal database,