Re: gcc can't find termcap library

[Ed Donovan <edonovan@world.std.com>]

Hi Susan, 

"Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@sgk.tiac.net> writes:

> It would probably be a good idea to remind folks (in the FAQ or wherever)
> about the rationale for using curses vs. termcap.  I tried to find one
> using AltaVista and DejaNews, but I'll bet you can guess what a snowstorm
> of "information" that yielded.  I understand that ncurses provides more
> support for shared libraries (than curses), but that's all I could find 
> so far.  Any additional pointers would be helpful.

I could certainly use some more education on the ncurses/terminfo vs.
curses/termcap usage issues, but you could draw on the reasons in the
ncurses documentation--in /usr/doc/ncurses-dev, and on the web at

	http://www.ccil.org/~esr/ncurses.html
and	http://ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov:81/ltpcf/about/unix/Depotdoc/ncurses/ 

(I don't know if the second one's canonical.)

These are the parts that say the whole combination's more powerful, and
curses and termcap are supposed to be on the way out.  They don't say
that the binary terminfo files are much faster than the ascii termcap
definitions; I don't know where I've been reading that, sorry.

>From the announce:

 "The ncurses library is a freeware emulation of System V Release 4.0
curses. It uses terminfo format, supports color and multiple highlights
and forms characters, and function-key mapping, and has all the other
SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD curses.

   In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared that he
considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and is encouraging the keepers of
Unix releases such as BSD/OS, freeBSD and netBSD to switch over to
ncurses."

And from the ncurses intro:

 "System III UNIX from Bell Labs featured a rewritten and much-improved
curses library. It introduced the terminfo format. Terminfo is based on
Berkeley's termcap database, but contains a number of improvements and
extensions. Parameterized capabilities strings were introduced, making
it possible to describe multiple video attributes, and colors and to
handle far more unusual terminals than possible with termcap. In the
later AT&T System V releases, curses evolved to use more facilities and
offer more capabilities, going far beyond BSD curses in power and
flexibility."

hth?

I think I'll be posting my own latest ncurses compilation question soon
:-)

-- 
Ed Donovan				edonovan@world.std.com