RE: Problem with tic

[rsbecker]

On Thursday, February 23, 2023 3:40 PM, Thomas Dickey wrote:
>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-e
ntries-
>in-terminfo-database
>
>https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/2.4.0?topic=descriptions-infocmp-compare-pr
int-
>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.

Would it make sense to convert and tag terminfo as ASCII on z/OS? That seems
to cure a number of problems in other products.