+
+</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.
+
+
+</PRE><H2><a name="h2-PORTABILITY">PORTABILITY</a></H2><PRE>
+ X/Open Curses, Issue 7 (2009) provides a brief description of <B>tic</B>. It
+ lists one option: <B>-c</B>. The omission of <B>-v</B> is unexpected. The change
+ history states that the description is derived from True64 UNIX.
+ According to its manual pages, that system also supported the <B>-v</B>
+ option.
+
+ Shortly after Issue 7 was released, Tru64 was discontinued. As of
+ 2019, the surviving implementations of <B>tic</B> are SVr4 (AIX, HP-UX and
+ Solaris), ncurses and NetBSD curses. The SVr4 <B>tic</B> programs all support
+ the <B>-v</B> option. The NetBSD <B>tic</B> program follows X/Open's documentation,
+ omitting the <B>-v</B> option.
+
+ The X/Open rationale states that some implementations of <B>tic</B> read
+ terminal descriptions from the standard input if the <I>file</I> parameter is
+ omitted. None of these implementations do that. Further, it comments
+ that some may choose to read from "./terminfo.src" but that is
+ obsolescent behavior from SVr2, and is not (for example) a documented
+ feature of SVr3.
+
+
+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-COMPATIBILITY">COMPATIBILITY</a></H3><PRE>
+ There is some evidence that historic <B>tic</B> implementations treated
+ description fields with no whitespace in them as additional aliases or
+ short names. This <B>tic</B> does not do that, but it does warn when
+ description fields may be treated that way and check them for dangerous
+ characters.
+
+
+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-EXTENSIONS">EXTENSIONS</a></H3><PRE>
+ Unlike the SVr4 <B>tic</B> command, this implementation can actually compile
+ termcap sources. In fact, entries in terminfo and termcap syntax can
+ be mixed in a single source file. See <B><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></B> for the list of
+ termcap names taken to be equivalent to terminfo names.
+
+ The SVr4 manual pages are not clear on the resolution rules for <B>use</B>
+ capabilities. This implementation of <B>tic</B> will find <B>use</B> targets
+ anywhere in the source file, or anywhere in the file tree rooted at
+ <B>TERMINFO</B> (if <B>TERMINFO</B> is defined), or in the user's <I>$HOME/.terminfo</I>
+ database (if it exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file
+ tree of compiled entries.
+
+ The error messages from this <B>tic</B> have the same format as GNU C error
+ messages, and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's compile facility.
+
+ Aside from <B>-c</B> and <B>-v</B>, options are not portable:
+
+ <B>o</B> Most of tic's options are not supported by SVr4 <B>tic</B>:
+
+ <B>-0</B> <B>-1</B> <B>-C</B> <B>-G</B> <B>-I</B> <B>-N</B> <B>-R</B> <B>-T</B> <B>-V</B> <B>-a</B> <B>-e</B> <B>-f</B> <B>-g</B> <B>-o</B> <B>-r</B> <B>-s</B> <B>-t</B> <B>-x</B>
+
+ <B>o</B> The NetBSD <B>tic</B> supports a few of the ncurses options
+
+ <B>-a</B> <B>-o</B> <B>-x</B>
+
+ and adds <B>-S</B> (a feature which does the same thing as infocmp's <B>-e</B>
+ and <B>-E</B> options).
+
+ The SVr4 <B>-c</B> mode does not report bad "use=" links.
+
+ System V does not compile entries to or read entries from your
+ <I>$HOME/.terminfo</I> database unless TERMINFO is explicitly set to it.
+
+
+</PRE><H2><a name="h2-FILES">FILES</a></H2><PRE>
+ <B>/usr/share/terminfo/?/*</B>