Re: Freebsd 14+ -- tcsh incompatible with terminfo

On Thu, Nov 02, 2023 at 06:58:55PM +0100, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> I do understand that a bit.  Other than that plain termcap was so
> small and i would assume essentially unchanged for decades, that
> i do not.  Termcap entries, yes.  I could imagine vt220, xterm,
> screen-256color, and take one of st-256color, whatever KDE and
> GNOME terminal, and rxvt-unicode.  Makes seven.  Likely
> automatically extractable via "infocmp -C" of Dickey's terminfo.
> 
> Let's just try that:
> 
>   $ rm .TCAP;\
>     for f in vt220 xterm screen-256color st-256color \
>         rxvt-256color gnome-256color konsole-256color; do \
>       infocmp -C $f >> .TCAP;\
>     done;\
>     ls -l .TCAP
>   -rw-r----- 1 steffen steffen 7145 Nov  2 18:40 .TCAP

There's more data in termcap than that (which some people would like to use).
And there's additional data for terminfo -- again, some want it.

man infocmp:

       For best results when converting to termcap format, you should use both
       -C  and  -r.   Normally a termcap description is limited to 1023 bytes.
       infocmp trims away less essential parts to make it  fit.   If  you  are
       converting to one of the (rare) termcap implementations which accept an
       unlimited size of termcap, you may want to add the -T option.  More of‐
       ten  however, you must help the termcap implementation, and trim excess
       whitespace (use the -0 option for that).

(-T is appropriate here - ymmv)

With -C alone, I get
-rw------- 1 tom users 7315 Nov  2 21:02 .TCAP

With -CrT,
-rw------- 1 tom users 14390 Nov  2 21:02 .TCAP

For terminfo, no options
-rw------- 1 tom users 16027 Nov  2 21:03 .TCAP

For terminfo with -x
-rw------- 1 tom users 19533 Nov  2 21:03 .TCAP

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
https://invisible-island.net