- The <STRONG>tgoto</STRONG> routine instantiates the parameters into the
- given capability. The output from this routine is to be
- passed to <STRONG>tputs</STRONG>.
+
+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-FORMATTING-CAPABILITIES">FORMATTING CAPABILITIES</a></H3><PRE>
+ The <STRONG>tgoto</STRONG> routine expands the given capability using the
+ parameters.
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> Because the capability may have padding characters,
+ the output of <STRONG>tgoto</STRONG> should be passed to <STRONG>tputs</STRONG> rather
+ than some other output function such as <STRONG>printf</STRONG>.
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> While <STRONG>tgoto</STRONG> is assumed to be used for the two-parame-
+ ter cursor positioning capability, termcap applica-
+ tions also use it for single-parameter capabilities.
+
+ Doing this shows a quirk in <STRONG>tgoto</STRONG>: most hardware ter-
+ minals use cursor addressing with <EM>row</EM> first, but the
+ original developers of the termcap interface chose to
+ put the <EM>column</EM> parameter first. The <STRONG>tgoto</STRONG> function
+ swaps the order of parameters. It does this also for
+ calls requiring only a single parameter. In that
+ case, the first parameter is merely a placeholder.
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> Normally the ncurses library is compiled with terminfo
+ support. In that case, <STRONG>tgoto</STRONG> uses <STRONG>tparm</STRONG> (a more capa-
+ ble formatter).