DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages
TIC(1) DragonFly General Commands Manual TIC(1)
NAME
tic -- the terminfo entry-description compiler
SYNOPSIS
tic [-1CGILNTUVacfgrstx] [-e names] [-o dir] [-R subset] [-v[n]] [-w[n]]
file
DESCRIPTION
The command tic translates a terminfo(5) file from source format into
compiled format. The compiled format is necessary for use with the
library routines in ncurses(3).
The results are normally placed in the system terminfo directory
/usr/share/terminfo. There are two ways to change this behavior.
First, you may override the system default by setting the variable
TERMINFO in your shell environment to a valid (existing) directory name.
Secondly, if tic cannot get access to /usr/share/terminfo or your
TERMINFO directory, it looks for the directory $HOME/.terminfo; if that
directory exists, the entry is placed there.
Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check for a TERMINFO
directory first, look at $HOME/.terminfo if TERMINFO is not set, and
finally look in /usr/share/terminfo.
-0 restricts the output to a single line
-1 restricts the output to a single column
-a tells tic to retain commented-out capabilities rather than
discarding them. Capabilities are commented by prefixing
them with a period. This sets the -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.
-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 -K option.
If this is combined with -c, tic makes additional checks to
report cases where the terminfo values do not have an exact
equivalent in termcap form. For example:
o 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.
o capabilities with more than one delay or with delays
before the end of the string will not convert completely.
-c tells tic to only check file for errors, including syntax
problems and bad use links. If you specify -C (-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.
tic 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 -x option are ignored.
-D tells tic 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 tic
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.
-e 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 `/'. Note:
depending on how tic was compiled, this option may require -I
or -C.
-f Display complex terminfo strings which contain
if/then/else/endif expressions indented for readability.
-G Display constant literals in decimal form rather than their
character equivalents.
-g Display constant character literals in quoted form rather
than their decimal equivalents.
-I Force source translation to terminfo format.
-K Suppress some longstanding ncurses extensions to termcap
format, e.g., ``\s'' for space.
-L Force source translation to terminfo format using the long C
variable names listed in <term.h>
-N Disable smart defaults. Normally, when translating from
termcap to terminfo, the compiler makes a number of
assumptions about the defaults of string capabilities
reset1_string, carriage_return, cursor_left, cursor_down,
scroll_forward, tab, newline, key_backspace, key_left, and
key_down, then attempts to use obsolete termcap capabilities
to deduce correct values. It also normally suppresses output
of obsolete termcap capabilities such as bs. This option
forces a more literal translation that also preserves the
obsolete capabilities.
-o dir Write compiled entries to given directory. Overrides the
TERMINFO environment variable.
-R 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 ``SVr1'', ``Ultrix'', ``HP'', ``BSD'' and
``AIX''; see terminfo(5) for details.
-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 4.3BSD) that does not handle multiple tc
capabilities per entry.
-s Summarize the compile by showing the directory into which
entries are written, and the number of entries which are
compiled.
-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).
-t tells tic to discard commented-out capabilities. Normally
when translating from terminfo to termcap, untranslatable
capabilities are commented-out.
-U tells tic 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.
-V reports the version of ncurses(3) which was used in this
program, and exits.
-v[n] specifies that (verbose) output be written to standard error
trace information showing tic's progress. The optional
parameter n is a number from 1 to 10, inclusive, indicating
the desired level of detail of information. If n is omitted,
the default level is 1. If n is specified and greater than
1, the level of detail is increased.
The debug flag levels are as follows:
1 Names of files created and linked
2 Information related to the ``use'' facility
3 Statistics from the hashing algorithm
5 String-table memory allocations
7 Entries into the string-table
8 List of tokens encountered by scanner
9 All values computed in construction of the hash table
If the debug level n is not given, it is taken to be one.
-w[n] specifies the width of the output. The parameter is
optional. If it is omitted, it defaults to 60.
-x Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined. That is, if you
supply a capability name which tic 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 `k' are
treated as function keys.
PARAMETERS
file contains one or more terminfo(5) terminal descriptions in source
format. Each description in the file describes the capabilities of
a particular terminal.
If file is "-", then the data is read from the standard input. The
file parameter may also be the path of a character-device.
PROCESSING
All but one of the capabilities recognized by tic are documented in
terminfo(5). The exception is the use capability.
When a use=entry-name field is discovered in a terminal entry currently
being compiled, tic reads in the binary from /usr/share/terminfo to
complete the entry. (Entries created from file will be used first. If
the environment variable TERMINFO is set, that directory is searched
instead of /usr/share/terminfo.) tic duplicates the capabilities in
entry-name for the current entry, with the exception of those
capabilities that explicitly are defined in the current entry.
When an entry, e.g. entry_name_1, contains a use=entry_name_2 field, any
canceled capabilities in entry_name_2 must also appear in entry_name_1
before use= for these capabilities to be canceled in entry_name_1.
If the environment variable TERMINFO is set, the compiled results are
placed there instead of /usr/share/terminfo.
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.
COMPATIBILITY
There is some evidence that historic tic implementations treated
description fields with no whitespace in them as additional aliases or
short names. This tic does not do that, but it does warn when
description fields may be treated that way and check them for dangerous
characters.
EXTENSIONS
Unlike the stock SVr4 tic 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 terminfo(5) for the list of
termcap names taken to be equivalent to terminfo names.
The SVr4 manual pages are not clear on the resolution rules for use
capabilities. This implementation of tic will find use targets anywhere
in the source file, or anywhere in the file tree rooted at TERMINFO (if
it is defined), or in the user's $HOME/.terminfo directory (if it
exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file tree of compiled
entries.
The error messages from this tic have the same format as GNU C error
messages, and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's compile facility.
The -C, -G, -I, -N, -R, -T, -V, -a, -e, -f, -g, -o, -r, -s, -t and -x
options are not supported under SVr4. The SVr4 -c mode does not report
bad use links.
System V does not compile entries to or read entries from your
$HOME/.terminfo directory unless TERMINFO is explicitly set to it.
FILES
/usr/share/terminfo/?/* Compiled terminal description database.
SEE ALSO
ncurses(3), terminfo(5)
AUTHORS
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
DragonFly 4.3 March 11, 2016 DragonFly 4.3