Re: xterm* terminfo entries missing in terminfo.src

[Thomas Dickey]

On Fri, Nov 01, 2019 at 08:57:37PM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
> There are some xterm* terminfo entries which are distributed with xterm,
> but not with ncurses (and vice versa, but that is currently not really
> interesting to me).
> 
> ,----
> | $ tic -x xterm-snapshots/terminfo -o /tmp/xterm
> | $ tic -x ncurses-snapshots/misc/terminfo.src -o /tmp/ncurses
> | $ comm -23 <(cd /tmp/xterm/x; ls) <(cd /tmp/ncurses/x; ls)
> | xterm+app+pc
> | xterm+decedit
> | xterm+noapp+pc
> | xterm+pce0
> | xterm+pce1
> | xterm+pce3
> | xterm+pcf1
> | xterm+pcf3
> | xterm+pcfN
> | xterm+pcfn
> | xterm-65
> | xterm-boldso
> | xterm-ic
> | xterm-mono
> | xterm-nrc
> | xterm-rep
> | xterm-vi
> | xterm-xmc
> `----
> 
> Some background: Debian has, at least for the last 21 years, compiled
> its xterm* terminfo files from the (slightly modified) xterm source,
> rather than from ncurses' terminfo.misc.  As Debian maintainer I
> consider that a bug and would like to change it, but this is quite
> difficult when xterm-mono is missing, since we are currently shipping
> xterm-mono in ncurses-base.
> 
> What is the reason for this discrepancy between xterm and ncurses?

more than one reason (other than inertia):

a) some, such as xterm-65 and xterm-mono weren't originally in ncurses.

   It's complicated -

   In a quick check, I see xterm-65 in X11R6 but not X11R5,
   xterm-mono in neither.  xterm-65 is in the oldest copy of terminfo
   for xterm however, April 1994.  I seem to recall that it wasn't
   interesting for ncurses, since its only use is to set lines to 65
   (useful for termcap applications, maybe).
   
   xterm's change history for termcap has xterm-mono from 1999, with it
   aliased to xtermm, xtermm was from XFree86, added in September 1995
   (I suspect copied from Solaris), and I replaced that with xterm-mono
   in 1998.  In my xterm changes for patch #85 (October 1998), I made a note
   about xterm-mono:

           avoid overlap with ncurses's terminal aliases except where I want
           them to be identical

b) some, such as xterm-nrc, xterm-xmc I wrote mostly to test xterm.
   (xterm-rep was like that too, but Werner's report a few years ago
   reminded me that ncurses needed an entry to make ncurses testable).

c) the variants of xterm+pcX/xterm-pcN that aren't in ncurses aren't
   simply because xterm's the only terminal that implements them,
   and they're not default-configuration.  I wrote a script to generate
   those.

I suppose you could summarize that as saying that they weren't suitable
for ncurses in some way.

There's some differences with the ones that have the same name,
which I iron out periodically.  I have a script that compares a
terminfo source file to what's installed. At the moment I see this:

comparing xterm to xterm.
        ka1: '\EOw', -.
        ka3: '\EOy', -.
        kb2: '\EOu', '\EOE'.
        kc1: '\EOq', -.
        kc3: '\EOs', -.
        ka2: '\EOx', -.
        kb1: '\EOt', -.
        kb3: '\EOv', -.
        kc2: '\EOr', -.
        kp5: '\EOE', -.
        kpADD: '\EOk', -.
        kpCMA: '\EOl', -.
        kpDIV: '\EOo', -.
        kpDOT: '\EOn', -.
        kpMUL: '\EOj', -.
        kpSUB: '\EOm', -.
        kpZRO: '\EOp', -.
comparing xterm+256color to xterm+256color.
        rs1: -, '\Ec\E]104\007'.

The left side is ncurses, the right is xterm.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
https://invisible-island.net
ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature