usr.bin/tic/tic.1

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.\" $Id: tic.1m,v 1.47 2010/12/04 18:38:55 tom Exp $
.Dd March 11, 2016
.Dt TIC 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm tic
.Nd the terminfo entry-description compiler
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl 1CGILNTUVacfgrstx
.Op Fl e Ar names
.Op Fl o Ar dir
.Op Fl R Ar subset
.Op Fl v Ns Op Ar n
.Op Fl w Ns Op Ar n
.Ar file
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The command
.Nm
translates a
.Xr terminfo 5
file from source format into compiled format.
The compiled format is necessary for use with the library routines in
.Xr ncurses 3 .
.Pp
The results are normally placed in the system terminfo directory
.Pa /usr/share/terminfo .
There are two ways to change this behavior.
.Pp
First, you may override the system default by setting the variable
.Ev TERMINFO
in your shell environment to a valid (existing) directory name.
.Pp
Secondly, if
.Nm
cannot get access to
.Pa /usr/share/terminfo
or your
.Ev TERMINFO
directory, it looks for the directory
.Pa $HOME/.terminfo ;
if that directory exists, the entry is placed there.
.Pp
Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check for a
.Ev TERMINFO
directory first, look at
.Pa $HOME/.terminfo
if
.Ev TERMINFO
is not set, and finally look in
.Pa /usr/share/terminfo .
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl R subset"
.It Fl 0
restricts the output to a single line
.It Fl 1
restricts the output to a single column
.It Fl a
tells
.Nm
to retain commented-out capabilities rather than discarding them.
Capabilities are commented by prefixing them with a period.
This sets the
.Fl x
option, because it treats the commented-out entries as user-defined names.
If the source is termcap, accept the 2-character names required by version 6.
Otherwise these are ignored.
.It Fl C
Force source translation to termcap format.
Capabilities that are not translatable are left in the entry under
their terminfo names but commented out with two preceding dots.
The actual format used incorporates some improvements for escaped characters
from terminfo format.
For a stricter BSD-compatible translation, add the
.Fl K
option.
.Pp
If this is combined with
.Fl c ,
.Nm
makes additional checks to report cases
where the terminfo values do not have an exact equivalent in termcap form.
For example:
.Bl -bullet
.It
sgr usually will not convert, because termcap lacks the ability to work
with more than two parameters, and because termcap lacks many of the
arithmetic/logical operators used in terminfo.
.It
capabilities with more than one delay or with delays before the end of
the string will not convert completely.
.El
.It Fl c
tells
.Nm
to only check
.Ar file
for errors, including syntax problems and bad use links.
If you specify
.Fl C
.Pq Fl I
with this option, the code will print warnings about entries which,
after use resolution, are more than 1023 (4096) bytes long.
Due to a fixed buffer length in older termcap libraries
(and a documented limit in terminfo),
these entries may cause core dumps with other implementations.
.Pp
.Nm
checks string capabilities to ensure that those with parameters will be
valid expressions.
It does this check only for the predefined string
capabilities; those which are defined with the
.Fl x
option are ignored.
.It Fl D
tells
.Nm
to print the database locations that it knows about, and exit.
The first location shown is the one to which it would write compiled
terminal descriptions.
If
.Nm
is not able to find a writable database location according to the rules
summarized above, it will print a diagnostic and exit with an
error rather than printing a list of database locations.
.It Fl e Ar names
Limit writes and translations to the following comma-separated list of
terminals.
If any name or alias of a terminal matches one of the names in
the list, the entry will be written or translated as normal.
Otherwise no output will be generated for it.
The option value is interpreted as a file containing the list if it
contains a
.Sq / .
Note: depending on how
.Nm
was compiled, this option may require
.Fl I
or
.Fl C .
.It Fl f
Display complex terminfo strings which contain if/then/else/endif expressions
indented for readability.
.It Fl G
Display constant literals in decimal form
rather than their character equivalents.
.It Fl g
Display constant character literals in quoted form
rather than their decimal equivalents.
.It Fl I
Force source translation to terminfo format.
.It Fl K
Suppress some longstanding ncurses extensions to termcap format,
e.g.,
.Do
\\s
.Dc
for space.
.It Fl L
Force source translation to terminfo format
using the long C variable names listed in
.In term.h
.It Fl N
Disable smart defaults.
Normally, when translating from termcap to terminfo, the compiler makes
a number of assumptions about the defaults of string capabilities
.Cm reset1_string ,
.Cm carriage_return ,
.Cm cursor_left ,
.Cm cursor_down ,
.Cm scroll_forward ,
.Cm tab ,
.Cm newline ,
.Cm key_backspace ,
.Cm key_left ,
and
.Cm key_down ,
then attempts to use obsolete termcap capabilities to deduce correct values.
It also normally suppresses output of obsolete termcap capabilities such as
.Cm bs .
This option forces a more literal translation that also preserves the
obsolete capabilities.
.It Fl o Ar dir
Write compiled entries to given directory.
Overrides the
.Ev TERMINFO
environment variable.
.It Fl R Ar subset
Restrict output to a given subset.
This option is for use with archaic versions of terminfo like those on
SVr1, Ultrix, or HP/UX that do not support the full set of
SVR4/XSI Curses terminfo;
and outright broken ports like AIX 3.x
that have their own extensions incompatible with SVr4/XSI.
Available subsets are
.Dq SVr1 ,
.Dq Ultrix ,
.Dq HP ,
.Dq BSD
and
.Dq AIX ;
see
.Xr terminfo 5
for details.
.It Fl r
Force entry resolution (so there are no remaining tc capabilities) even
when doing translation to termcap format.
This may be needed if you are
preparing a termcap file for a termcap library (such as GNU termcap through
version 1.3 or BSD termcap through
.Bx 4.3 )
that does not handle multiple tc capabilities per entry.
.It Fl s
Summarize the compile by showing the directory into which entries
are written, and the number of entries which are compiled.
.It Fl T
eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text.
This is mainly useful for testing and analysis, since the compiled
descriptions are limited (e.g.\& 1023 for termcap, 4096 for terminfo).
.It Fl t
tells
.Nm
to discard commented-out capabilities.
Normally when translating from terminfo to termcap,
untranslatable capabilities are commented-out.
.It Fl U
tells
.Nm
to not post-process the data after parsing the source file.
Normally, it infers data which is commonly missing in older terminfo data,
or in termcaps.
.It Fl V
reports the version of
.Xr ncurses 3
which was used in this program, and exits.
.It Fl v Ns Op Ar n
specifies that (verbose) output be written to standard error trace
information showing
.Nm Ns 's
progress.
The optional parameter
.Ar n
is a number from 1 to 10, inclusive,
indicating the desired level of detail of information.
If
.Ar n
is omitted, the default level is 1.
If
.Ar n
is specified and greater than 1, the level of
detail is increased.
.Pp
The debug flag levels are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width "1xxx" -compact
.It 1
Names of files created and linked
.It 2
Information related to the
.Dq use
facility
.It 3
Statistics from the hashing algorithm
.It 5
String-table memory allocations
.It 7
Entries into the string-table
.It 8
List of tokens encountered by scanner
.It 9
All values computed in construction of the hash table
.El
.Pp
If the debug level
.Ar n
is not given, it is taken to be one.
.It Fl w Ns Op Ar n
specifies the width of the output.
The parameter is optional.
If it is omitted, it defaults to 60.
.It Fl x
Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined.
That is, if you supply a capability name which
.Nm
does not recognize, it will infer its type (boolean, number or string)
from the syntax and make an extended table entry for that.
User-defined capability strings
whose name begins with
.Sq k
are treated as function keys.
.El
.Sh PARAMETERS
.Bl -tag -width "file"
.It Ar file
contains one or more
.Xr terminfo 5
terminal descriptions in source format.
Each description in the file
describes the capabilities of a particular terminal.
.Pp
If file is "-", then the data is read from the standard input.
The file parameter may also be the path of a character-device.
.El
.Sh PROCESSING
All but one of the capabilities recognized by
.Nm
are documented in
.Xr terminfo 5 .
The exception is the
.Cm use
capability.
.Pp
When a
.Cm use Ns Li = Ns Ar entry-name
field is discovered in a terminal entry currently being compiled,
.Nm
reads in the binary from
.Pa /usr/share/terminfo
to complete the entry.
(Entries created from
.Ar file
will be used first.
If the environment variable
.Ev TERMINFO
is set, that directory is searched instead of
.Pa /usr/share/terminfo . )
.Nm
duplicates the capabilities in
.Ar entry-name
for the current entry, with the exception of
those capabilities that explicitly are defined in the current entry.
.Pp
When an entry, e.g.\&
.Li entry_name_1 ,
contains a
.Cm use Ns Li = Ns Li entry_name_2
field, any canceled capabilities in
.Li entry_name_2
must also appear in
.Li entry_name_1
before
.Cm use Ns Li =
for these capabilities to be canceled in
.Li entry_name_1 .
.Pp
If the environment variable
.Ev TERMINFO
is set, the compiled results are placed there instead of
.Pa /usr/share/terminfo .
.Pp
Total compiled entries cannot exceed 4096 bytes.
The name field cannot exceed 512 bytes.
Terminal names exceeding the maximum alias length
(32 characters on systems with long filenames, 14 characters otherwise)
will be truncated to the maximum alias length and a warning message
will be printed.
.Ss COMPATIBILITY
There is some evidence that historic
.Nm
implementations treated description fields with no whitespace
in them as additional aliases or short names.
This
.Nm
does not do that, but it does warn when description fields may be
treated that way and check them for dangerous characters.
.Ss EXTENSIONS
Unlike the stock SVr4
.Nm
command, this implementation can actually compile termcap sources.
In fact, entries in terminfo and termcap syntax can
be mixed in a single source file.
See
.Xr terminfo 5
for the list of termcap names taken to be equivalent to terminfo names.
.Pp
The SVr4 manual pages are not clear on the resolution rules for
.Cm use
capabilities.
This implementation of
.Nm
will find
.Cm use
targets anywhere in the source file,
or anywhere in the file tree rooted at
.Ev TERMINFO
(if it is defined), or in the user's
.Pa $HOME/.terminfo
directory (if it exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's
file tree of compiled entries.
.Pp
The error messages from this
.Nm
have the same format as GNU C error messages,
and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's compile facility.
.Pp
The
.Fl C ,
.Fl G ,
.Fl I ,
.Fl N ,
.Fl R ,
.Fl T ,
.Fl V ,
.Fl a ,
.Fl e ,
.Fl f ,
.Fl g ,
.Fl o ,
.Fl r ,
.Fl s ,
.Fl t
and
.Fl x
options are not supported under SVr4.
The SVr4
.Fl c
mode does not report bad use links.
.Pp
System V does not compile entries to or read entries from your
.Pa $HOME/.terminfo
directory unless
.Ev TERMINFO
is explicitly set to it.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width "Pa /usr/share/terminfo/?/*"
.It Pa /usr/share/terminfo/?/*
Compiled terminal description database.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr ncurses 3 ,
.Xr terminfo 5
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Eric S. Raymond Aq Mt esr@snark.thyrsus.com
.An Thomas E. Dickey Aq Mt dickey@invisible-island.net