#termcap — Public Fediverse posts

@b0rk Not only have I had this situation, I also have the reverse on my OpenBSD box, where pressing backspace inside tmux sends a control+h (0x08), so to actually backspace I need to type control+backspace (0x7F)

It works fine outside tmux. Gotta get that sorted out at some point. #termcap #terminfo

@bean

Of course, there is the O'Reilly book on #termcap and #terminfo, which does have that sort of documentation. But it hasn't been updated since 1992, thus tending to reinforce your point. (-:

@zirias @mpts

Actually you did: "Using termcap/terminfo directly nowadays means using curses." I hope that you understand the point that I was making, now. I don't want to belabour it. (-:

Things come along that expect either the #termcap compatibility functionality of #terminfo and break on true termcap, or the existence of true terminfo databases. Not often enough to press #FreeBSD to change, it appears, but still on a regular basis.

@mpts @zirias

No. #FreeBSD provides only #termcap as standard right now. #terminfo is only available as a port.

It's possibly the only mainstream operating system where this is still the case. NetBSD and OpenBSD both provide terminfo. I haven't checked Illumos.

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/tree/main/share/termcap

@JdeBP @zirias #FreeBSD is using #terminfo instead of #termcap as of 2024.

@JdeBP AFAIK, base #curses in #FreeBSD 14 already uses #terminfo (instead of the bundled #termcap) *if* it is installed (as a package). But sure, having it directly in base and getting rid of termcap would be much nicer.

Never say something is finished 🙈

Browsing https://16colo.rs/ I found some #ansiart file that immediately had my attention because it crashed my #terminfo writer. Turns out attempting fallback to #termcap names makes no sense with terminfo ... although it shouldn't hurt either, but it did with "xterm-256color" on #FreeBSD for the "blink"/"mb" capability, "mb" returned something, but something "else" 🙄 ... so I fixed that.

This file was strange enough to use it for more testing, it had "blinking" characters (according to #SAUCE), although ignoring that and using bright colors instead looked much more sane, see two screenshots for comparison (oh wow, #xterm can actually blink? although not like #VGA would...)

Anyways, I found a lot more things to optimize and fix in both my "plain ANSI" and "terminfo" color writers!

So, there will be #dos2ansi v1.2 soon. Will probably add some small feature first, just "because" 😂

Here's a mystery on #FreeBSD using tput(1) in #xterm with $TERM set to xterm-256colors:

$ tput colors
80
$ tput Co
256

I think this *should* query the exact same property, once by its #terminfo name, once by the short #termcap name.

To add to the confusion, in the "dos2ansi" tool I currently write, I use tigetstr() and tigetnum() and prefer the terminfo names, but fall back to the termcap names. The response I get for "number of colors" there is 256, with the same configuration.

Anyone got any ideas which weird magic is going on here? 🤔

New pre-release of dos2ansi: v0.2

* Works on #Windows, win32 binary (cross-compiled on #FreeBSD) attached
* Selectable input #codepage (so far only #cp437, #cp850 and #cp858)
* Selectable output format, #utf8, #utf16 or #utf16le, with or without #BOM

Still a few things to add, e.g. use #termcap/#terminfo or Windows Console API for "color output" when applicable ... we will see 😎

https://github.com/Zirias/dos2ansi/releases/tag/v0.2

@n Also, note that #FreeBSD moved from #termcap to #terminfo in newer releases, which might be why the troubleshooting tips you find online are not working.

Hi #hivemind, has anyone got the #Wyse WY-120 #serial #terminal to work correctly on #Linux with any #terminfo entries? Specifically, it has trouble with backspace/delete, arrow keys and general #curses page layout. #Halp?

PS: I've seen @veronicaexplains's wonderful video on the WY-55 but this one unforunately seems to have different behaviour.

#retro #retrocomputing #serialport #serialcommunications #termcap #tty #ttyusb #rs232 #ncurses