+</PRE><H2><a name="h2-HISTORY">HISTORY</a></H2><PRE>
+ System V Release 2 provided a <B>tic</B> utility. It accepted a single
+ option: <B>-v</B> (optionally followed by a number). According to Ross
+ Ridge's comment in <I>mytinfo</I>, this version of <B>tic</B> was unable to represent
+ cancelled capabilities.
+
+ System V Release 3 provided a different <B>tic</B> utility, written by Pavel
+ Curtis, (originally named "compile" in <I>pcurses</I>). This added an option
+ <B>-c</B> 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 <I>pcurses</I>. While the program
+ itself was changed little as development continued with System V
+ Release 4, the table of capabilities grew from 180 (<I>pcurses</I>) to 464
+ (Solaris).
+
+ In early development of ncurses (1993), Zeyd Ben-Halim used the table
+ from <I>mytinfo</I> to extend the <I>pcurses</I> 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 <B>memory_lock_above</B> and <B>memory_unlock</B> (see
+ <B><A HREF="user_caps.5.html">user_caps(5)</A></B>).
+
+ Eric Raymond incorporated parts of <I>mytinfo</I> 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 <B>-x</B> option to support user-defined
+ capabilities.
+
+ In 2010, Roy Marples provided a <B>tic</B> program and terminfo library for
+ NetBSD. That implementation adapts several features from ncurses,
+ including <B>tic</B>'s <B>-x</B> option.
+
+ The <B>-c</B> option tells <B>tic</B> to check for problems in the terminfo source
+ file. Continued development provides additional checks:
+
+ <B>o</B> <I>pcurses</I> had 8 warnings
+
+ <B>o</B> ncurses in 1996 had 16 warnings
+
+ <B>o</B> Solaris (SVr4) curses has 28 warnings
+
+ <B>o</B> NetBSD tic in 2019 has 19 warnings.
+
+ <B>o</B> ncurses in 2019 has 96 warnings
+
+ The checking done in ncurses' <B>tic</B> 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.