MirBSD manpage: tic(1)
tic(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual tic(1)
tic - the terminfo entry-description compiler
tic [-1CGILNTVacfgrstx] [-e names] [-o dir] [-R subset] [-
v[n]] [-w[n]] file
The command tic translates a terminfo file from source for-
mat 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.
-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. Note: this
differs from the -C option of infocmp(1) in that it
does not merely translate capability names, but also
translates terminfo strings to termcap format. Capa-
bilities that are not translatable are left in the
entry under their terminfo names but commented out with
two preceding dots.
-c tells tic to only check file for errors, including syn-
tax 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
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(4096) bytes long. Due to a fixed buffer length in
older termcap libraries (and a documented limit in ter-
minfo), these entries may cause core dumps.
-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. Other-
wise 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 com-
piled, this option may require -I or -C.)
-f Display complex terminfo strings which contain
if/then/else/endif expressions indented for readabil-
ity.
-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.
-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.
-odir
Write compiled entries to given directory. Overrides
the TERMINFO environment variable.
-Rsubset
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 incompati-
ble with SVr4/XSI. Available subsets are "SVr1",
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"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. Nor-
mally when translating from terminfo to termcap,
untranslatable capabilities are commented-out.
-V reports the version of ncurses which was used in this
program, and exits.
-vn specifies that (verbose) output be written to standard
error trace information showing tic's progress. The
optional integer 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.
-wn specifies the width of the output.
-x Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined. That is, if
you supply a capability name which tic does not recog-
nize, 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.
file contains one or more terminfo terminal descriptions in
source format [see terminfo(5)]. Each description in
the file describes the capabilities of a particular
terminal.
The debug flag levels are as follows:
1 Names of files created and linked
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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.
All but one of the capabilities recognized by tic are docu-
mented 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.
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.
Unlike the stock SVr4 tic command, this implementation can
actually compile termcap sources. In fact, entries in ter-
minfo and termcap syntax can be mixed in a single source
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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 TERMINFO 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.
/usr/share/terminfo/?/*
Compiled terminal description database.
infocmp(1), captoinfo(1), infotocap(1), toe(1), curses(3),
terminfo(5).
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