Re: Problem with tic

[Thomas Dickey]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2023 at 06:55:48PM +0000, Caron, François wrote:
> [cid:logo_MCN_Courriel_622c23f2-1a24-4cf2-a00a-95479a689f68.png]
> Hi,
> 
> I'm wondering why I have these warnings and problem on line 1.
> 
> Operating System: z/OS  02.04.00
> Java version: 1.8.0_341
> 
> Best regards
> 
> $ tic terminfo-20180127.src
> tic: Warning: near line 1: terminal '', Illegal character - '-'
> tic: Warning: near line 1: terminal '', Illegal character - 'Á'
> tic: Line 1: terminal '', File does not start with terminal names in column 
> one

z/OS uses EBCDIC, with some provision for reading ASCII files.

https://medium.com/theropod/z-os-unix-character-encoding-best-practices-2660cc76b2e9

For processing the terminfo source (all ASCII, including tab and line-feed),
I can see that would be a problem if you "simply" translated it to EBCDIC,
because a lot of the content is literally the codes (in ASCII) which would
be sent to a terminal.

For example, in this fragment,

aixterm|IBM Aixterm Terminal Emulator,
        am, bw, eslok, hs, msgr, xon,
        colors#8, cols#80, it#8, lines#25, pairs#64,
        acsc=jjkkllmmnnqqttuuvvwwxx, bel=^G, bold=\E[1m,
        clear=\E[H\E[J, cr=\r, cub=\E[%p1%dD, cub1=^H,

the
        jjkkllmmnnqqttuuvvwwxx

is a sequence of codes assumed to be ASCII.
and in
        clear=\E[H\E[J, cr=\r, cub=\E[%p1%dD, cub1=^H,

the "[", "J", "D" are also assumed to be ASCII.

I see in the documentation for tic and infocmp some indication of this:

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/2.4.0?topic=descriptions-tic-put-terminal-entries-in-terminfo-database

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/2.4.0?topic=descriptions-infocmp-compare-print-terminal-description

in particular (tic):

        Specifies the name of a file containing the terminal specifications. 
        Only a single file name can be specified.  The files supported by z/OS
        Curses are identical to the specifications with the exception that the
        source code must be EBCDIC rather than ASCII.

so... it seems that you'll have to (mechanically) translate the ASCII file
to EBCDIC so that the IBM tic can translate it back to ASCII.

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

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