ncurses 6.2 - patch 20210403

[ncurses.git] / man / curs_termcap.3x

diff --git a/man/curs_termcap.3x b/man/curs_termcap.3x
index 5a85467b14e200af4fcabd6685457ddf28e6a3a6..94bed5beeefc8fd7ada66aa8863b16debce772f3 100644 (file)
--- a/man/curs_termcap.3x
+++ b/man/curs_termcap.3x
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 .\"***************************************************************************
-.\" Copyright 2018-2019,2020 Thomas E. Dickey                                *
+.\" Copyright 2018-2020,2021 Thomas E. Dickey                                *
 .\" Copyright 1998-2017,2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.                  *
 .\"                                                                          *
 .\" Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a  *
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
 .\" authorization.                                                           *
 .\"***************************************************************************
 .\"
-.\" $Id: curs_termcap.3x,v 1.45 2020/10/24 09:24:31 tom Exp $
+.\" $Id: curs_termcap.3x,v 1.49 2021/04/03 21:17:09 tom Exp $
 .TH curs_termcap 3X ""
 .ie \n(.g .ds `` \(lq
 .el       .ds `` ``
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@
 \fBtgetnum\fR,
 \fBtgetstr\fR,
 \fBtgoto\fR,
-\fBtputs\fR \- direct \fBcurses\fR interface to the terminfo capability database
+\fBtputs\fR \- \fBcurses\fR emulation of termcap
 .ad
 .hy
 .SH SYNOPSIS
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@
 .SH DESCRIPTION
 These routines are included as a conversion aid for programs that use
 the \fItermcap\fR library.
-Their parameters are the same and the
+Their parameters are the same, but the
 routines are emulated using the \fIterminfo\fR database.
 Thus, they
 can only be used to query the capabilities of entries for which a
@@ -218,12 +218,23 @@ if the string is indeed terminfo-style by looking for "%p" parameters or
 appear to be terminfo).
 .PP
 Because terminfo conventions for representing padding in string capabilities
-differ from termcap's, \fBtputs("50");\fR will put out a literal \*(``50\*('' rather
-than busy-waiting for 50 milliseconds.
-Cope with it.
+differ from termcap's,
+users can be surprised:
+.bP
+\fBtputs("50")\fR in a terminfo system will put out a literal \*(``50\*(''
+rather than busy-waiting for 50 milliseconds.
+.bP
+However, if ncurses is configured to support termcap,
+it may also have been configured to support the BSD-style padding.
+.IP
+In that case, \fBtputs\fP inspects strings passed to it,
+looking for digits at the beginning of the string.
+.IP
+\fBtputs("50")\fR in a termcap system may wait for 50 milliseconds
+rather than put out a literal \*(``50\*(''
 .PP
 Note that termcap has nothing analogous to terminfo's \fBsgr\fR string.
-One consequence of this is that termcap applications assume \fRme\fR
+One consequence of this is that termcap applications assume \fBme\fR
 (terminfo \fBsgr0\fR) does not reset the alternate character set.
 This implementation checks for, and modifies the data shown to the
 termcap interface to accommodate termcap's limitation in this respect.
@@ -331,8 +342,8 @@ which must be taken into account by programs which can work with all
 termcap library interfaces.
 .SH SEE ALSO
 \fBcurses\fR(3X),
-\fBterminfo\fR(\*n),
+\fBputc\fR(3),
 \fBterm_variables\fR(3X),
-\fBputc\fR(3).
+\fBterminfo\fR(\*n).
 .sp
 https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tctest.html