.\"***************************************************************************
-.\" Copyright (c) 2008-2017,2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
+.\" Copyright (c) 2008-2018,2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
.\" *
.\" Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a *
.\" copy of this software and associated documentation files (the *
.\" authorization. *
.\"***************************************************************************
.\"
-.\" $Id: tabs.1,v 1.19 2018/07/28 21:46:31 tom Exp $
+.\" $Id: tabs.1,v 1.20 2019/02/16 23:56:38 tom Exp $
.TH @TABS@ 1 ""
.ds n 5
.ie \n(.g .ds `` \(lq
You can redirect the standard output to a file (which prevents
\fB@TABS@\fR from actually changing the tabstops),
and later \fBcat\fP the file to the screen, setting tabstops at that point.
+.PP
+These are hardware tabs, which cannot be queried rapidly by applications
+running in the terminal, if at all.
+Curses and other full-screen applications may use hardware tabs
+in optimizing their output to the terminal.
+If the hardware tabstops differ from the information in the terminal
+database, the result is unpredictable.
.SH OPTIONS
.SS General Options
.TP 5