Re: Problem with tic

[Thomas Dickey]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2023 at 03:48:38PM -0500, rsbecker@nexbridge.com wrote:
> 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.

probably (but I can't test that, and the manpage isn't helpful in this case)

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

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