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30 * @Id: tic.1m,v 1.33 2002/10/05 20:06:13 tom Exp @
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46 <STRONG>tic</STRONG> - the <EM>terminfo</EM> entry-description compiler
50 <H2>SYNOPSIS</H2><PRE>
51 <STRONG>tic</STRONG> [<STRONG>-1CGILNTVacfgrstx</STRONG>] [<STRONG>-e</STRONG> <EM>names</EM>] [<STRONG>-o</STRONG> <EM>dir</EM>] [<STRONG>-R</STRONG> <EM>subset</EM>]
52 [<STRONG>-v</STRONG>[<EM>n</EM>]] [<STRONG>-w</STRONG>[<EM>n</EM>]] <EM>file</EM>
56 <H2>DESCRIPTION</H2><PRE>
57 The command <STRONG>tic</STRONG> translates a <STRONG>terminfo</STRONG> file from source
58 format into compiled format. The compiled format is nec-
59 essary for use with the library routines in <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">ncurses(3x)</A></STRONG>.
61 The results are normally placed in the system terminfo
62 directory <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG>. There are two ways to
65 First, you may override the system default by setting the
66 variable <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> in your shell environment to a valid
67 (existing) directory name.
69 Secondly, if <STRONG>tic</STRONG> cannot get access to <EM>/usr/share/terminfo</EM>
70 or your TERMINFO directory, it looks for the directory
71 <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM>; if that directory exists, the entry is
74 Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check
75 for a TERMINFO directory first, look at <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM> if
76 TERMINFO is not set, and finally look in <EM>/usr/share/ter-</EM>
79 <STRONG>-1</STRONG> restricts the output to a single column
81 <STRONG>-a</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to retain commented-out capabilities
82 rather than discarding them. Capabilities are com-
83 mented by prefixing them with a period. This sets
84 the <STRONG>-x</STRONG> option, because it treats the commented-out
85 entries as user-defined names.
87 <STRONG>-C</STRONG> Force source translation to termcap format. Note:
88 this differs from the -C option of <STRONG><A HREF="infocmp.1m.html">infocmp(1m)</A></STRONG> in
89 that it does not merely translate capability names,
90 but also translates terminfo strings to termcap
91 format. Capabilities that are not translatable are
92 left in the entry under their terminfo names but
93 commented out with two preceding dots.
95 <STRONG>-c</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to only check <EM>file</EM> for errors, including
96 syntax problems and bad use links. If you specify
97 <STRONG>-C</STRONG> (<STRONG>-I</STRONG>) with this option, the code will print warn-
98 ings about entries which, after use resolution, are
99 more than 1023 (4096) bytes long. Due to a fixed
100 buffer length in older termcap libraries (and a
101 documented limit in terminfo), these entries may
104 <STRONG>-e</STRONG> <EM>names</EM>
105 Limit writes and translations to the following
106 comma-separated list of terminals. If any name or
107 alias of a terminal matches one of the names in the
108 list, the entry will be written or translated as
109 normal. Otherwise no output will be generated for
110 it. The option value is interpreted as a file con-
111 taining the list if it contains a '/'. (Note:
112 depending on how tic was compiled, this option may
115 <STRONG>-f</STRONG> Display complex terminfo strings which contain
116 if/then/else/endif expressions indented for read-
119 <STRONG>-G</STRONG> Display constant literals in decimal form rather
120 than their character equivalents.
122 <STRONG>-g</STRONG> Display constant character literals in quoted form
123 rather than their decimal equivalents.
125 <STRONG>-I</STRONG> Force source translation to terminfo format.
127 <STRONG>-L</STRONG> Force source translation to terminfo format using
128 the long C variable names listed in <<STRONG>term.h</STRONG>>
130 <STRONG>-N</STRONG> Disable smart defaults. Normally, when translating
131 from termcap to terminfo, the compiler makes a num-
132 ber of assumptions about the defaults of string
133 capabilities <STRONG>reset1_string</STRONG>, <STRONG>carriage_return</STRONG>, <STRONG>cur-</STRONG>
134 <STRONG>sor_left</STRONG>, <STRONG>cursor_down</STRONG>, <STRONG>scroll_forward</STRONG>, <STRONG>tab</STRONG>, <STRONG>new-</STRONG>
135 <STRONG>line</STRONG>, <STRONG>key_backspace</STRONG>, <STRONG>key_left</STRONG>, and <STRONG>key_down</STRONG>, then
136 attempts to use obsolete termcap capabilities to
137 deduce correct values. It also normally suppresses
138 output of obsolete termcap capabilities such as <STRONG>bs</STRONG>.
139 This option forces a more literal translation that
140 also preserves the obsolete capabilities.
142 <STRONG>-o</STRONG><EM>dir</EM> Write compiled entries to given directory. Over-
143 rides the TERMINFO environment variable.
145 <STRONG>-R</STRONG><EM>subset</EM>
146 Restrict output to a given subset. This option is
147 for use with archaic versions of terminfo like
148 those on SVr1, Ultrix, or HP/UX that do not support
149 the full set of SVR4/XSI Curses terminfo; and out-
150 right broken ports like AIX 3.x that have their own
151 extensions incompatible with SVr4/XSI. Available
152 subsets are "SVr1", "Ultrix", "HP", "BSD" and
153 "AIX"; see <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> for details.
155 <STRONG>-r</STRONG> Force entry resolution (so there are no remaining
156 tc capabilities) even when doing translation to
157 termcap format. This may be needed if you are
158 preparing a termcap file for a termcap library
159 (such as GNU termcap through version 1.3 or BSD
160 termcap through 4.3BSD) that does not handle multi-
161 ple tc capabilities per entry.
163 <STRONG>-s</STRONG> Summarize the compile by showing the directory into
164 which entries are written, and the number of
165 entries which are compiled.
167 <STRONG>-T</STRONG> eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text.
168 This is mainly useful for testing and analysis,
169 since the compiled descriptions are limited (e.g.,
170 1023 for termcap, 4096 for terminfo).
172 <STRONG>-t</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to discard commented-out capabilities.
173 Normally when translating from terminfo to termcap,
174 untranslatable capabilities are commented-out.
176 <STRONG>-V</STRONG> reports the version of ncurses which was used in
177 this program, and exits.
179 <STRONG>-v</STRONG><EM>n</EM> specifies that (verbose) output be written to stan-
180 dard error trace information showing <STRONG>tic</STRONG>'s
181 progress. The optional integer <EM>n</EM> is a number from
182 1 to 10, inclusive, indicating the desired level of
183 detail of information. If <EM>n</EM> is omitted, the
184 default level is 1. If <EM>n</EM> is specified and greater
185 than 1, the level of detail is increased.
187 <STRONG>-w</STRONG><EM>n</EM> specifies the width of the output.
189 <STRONG>-x</STRONG> Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined. That
190 is, if you supply a capability name which <STRONG>tic</STRONG> does
191 not recognize, it will infer its type (boolean,
192 number or string) from the syntax and make an
193 extended table entry for that.
195 <EM>file</EM> contains one or more <STRONG>terminfo</STRONG> terminal descriptions
196 in source format [see <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>]. Each descrip-
197 tion in the file describes the capabilities of a
200 The debug flag levels are as follows:
202 1 Names of files created and linked
204 2 Information related to the ``use'' facility
206 3 Statistics from the hashing algorithm
208 5 String-table memory allocations
210 7 Entries into the string-table
212 8 List of tokens encountered by scanner
214 9 All values computed in construction of the hash
217 If the debug level <EM>n</EM> is not given, it is taken to be one.
219 All but one of the capabilities recognized by <STRONG>tic</STRONG> are doc-
220 umented in <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>. The exception is the <STRONG>use</STRONG> capabil-
223 When a <STRONG>use</STRONG>=<EM>entry</EM>-<EM>name</EM> field is discovered in a terminal
224 entry currently being compiled, <STRONG>tic</STRONG> reads in the binary
225 from <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG> to complete the entry. (Entries
226 created from <EM>file</EM> will be used first. If the environment
227 variable <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> is set, that directory is searched
228 instead of <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG>.) <STRONG>tic</STRONG> duplicates the capa-
229 bilities in <EM>entry</EM>-<EM>name</EM> for the current entry, with the
230 exception of those capabilities that explicitly are
231 defined in the current entry.
233 When an entry, e.g., <STRONG>entry_name_1</STRONG>, contains a
234 <STRONG>use=</STRONG><EM>entry</EM>_<EM>name</EM>_<EM>2</EM> field, any canceled capabilities in
235 <EM>entry</EM>_<EM>name</EM>_<EM>2</EM> must also appear in <STRONG>entry_name_1</STRONG> before <STRONG>use=</STRONG>
236 for these capabilities to be canceled in <STRONG>entry_name_1</STRONG>.
238 If the environment variable <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> is set, the compiled
239 results are placed there instead of <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG>.
241 Total compiled entries cannot exceed 4096 bytes. The name
242 field cannot exceed 512 bytes. Terminal names exceeding
243 the maximum alias length (32 characters on systems with
244 long filenames, 14 characters otherwise) will be truncated
245 to the maximum alias length and a warning message will be
250 <H2>COMPATIBILITY</H2><PRE>
251 There is some evidence that historic <STRONG>tic</STRONG> implementations
252 treated description fields with no whitespace in them as
253 additional aliases or short names. This <STRONG>tic</STRONG> does not do
254 that, but it does warn when description fields may be
255 treated that way and check them for dangerous characters.
259 <H2>EXTENSIONS</H2><PRE>
260 Unlike the stock SVr4 <STRONG>tic</STRONG> command, this implementation can
261 actually compile termcap sources. In fact, entries in
262 terminfo and termcap syntax can be mixed in a single
263 source file. See <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> for the list of termcap
264 names taken to be equivalent to terminfo names.
266 The SVr4 manual pages are not clear on the resolution
267 rules for <STRONG>use</STRONG> capabilities. This implementation of <STRONG>tic</STRONG>
268 will find <STRONG>use</STRONG> targets anywhere in the source file, or any-
269 where in the file tree rooted at <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> (if <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> is
270 defined), or in the user's <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM> directory (if
271 it exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file
272 tree of compiled entries.
274 The error messages from this <STRONG>tic</STRONG> have the same format as
275 GNU C error messages, and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's
278 The <STRONG>-C</STRONG>, <STRONG>-G</STRONG>, <STRONG>-I</STRONG>, <STRONG>-N</STRONG>, <STRONG>-R</STRONG>, <STRONG>-T</STRONG>, <STRONG>-V</STRONG>, <STRONG>-a</STRONG>, <STRONG>-e</STRONG>, <STRONG>-f</STRONG>, <STRONG>-g</STRONG>, <STRONG>-o</STRONG>, <STRONG>-r</STRONG>,
279 <STRONG>-s</STRONG>, <STRONG>-t</STRONG> and <STRONG>-x</STRONG> options are not supported under SVr4. The
280 SVr4 -c mode does not report bad use links.
282 System V does not compile entries to or read entries from
283 your <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM> directory unless TERMINFO is explic-
289 <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo/?/*</STRONG>
290 Compiled terminal description database.
294 <H2>SEE ALSO</H2><PRE>
295 <STRONG><A HREF="infocmp.1m.html">infocmp(1m)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="captoinfo.1m.html">captoinfo(1m)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="infotocap.1m.html">infotocap(1m)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="toe.1m.html">toe(1m)</A></STRONG>,
296 <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">curses(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>.
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