1tic(1M)                                                                tic(1M)
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3
4

NAME

6       tic - the terminfo entry-description compiler
7

SYNOPSIS

9       tic  [-01CDGIKLNTUVWacfgqrstx]  [-e names] [-o dir] [-Q[n]] [-R subset]
10       [-v[n]] [-w[n]] file
11

DESCRIPTION

13       The tic command translates a terminfo file from source format into com‐
14       piled  format.   The  compiled  format  is  necessary  for use with the
15       library routines in ncurses(3X).
16
17       As described in term(5), the database may be either  a  directory  tree
18       (one  file  per  terminal  entry)  or a hashed database (one record per
19       entry).  The tic command writes only one type of  entry,  depending  on
20       how it was built:
21
22       ·   For directory trees, the top-level directory, e.g., /usr/share/ter‐
23           minfo, specifies the location of the database.
24
25       ·   For hashed databases, a filename is needed.  If the given  file  is
26           not  found  by  that  name,  but  can be found by adding the suffix
27           ".db", then that is used.
28
29           The default name for the hashed database is the same as the default
30           directory name (only adding a ".db" suffix).
31
32       In either case (directory or hashed database), tic will create the con‐
33       tainer if it does not exist.  For a directory, this would be the  "ter‐
34       minfo" leaf, versus a "terminfo.db" file.
35
36       The  results  are  normally  placed  in  the  system  terminfo database
37       /usr/share/terminfo.  The compiled terminal description can  be  placed
38       in a different terminfo database.  There are two ways to achieve this:
39
40       ·   First,  you  may override the system default either by using the -o
41           option, or by setting the variable TERMINFO in your shell  environ‐
42           ment to a valid database location.
43
44       ·   Secondly,  if  tic cannot write in /usr/share/terminfo or the loca‐
45           tion specified using your  TERMINFO  variable,  it  looks  for  the
46           directory  $HOME/.terminfo (or hashed database $HOME/.terminfo.db);
47           if that location exists, the entry is placed there.
48
49       Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check  in  succes‐
50       sion
51
52       ·   a location specified with the TERMINFO environment variable,
53
54       ·   $HOME/.terminfo,
55
56       ·   directories listed in the TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable,
57
58       ·   a compiled-in list of directories (no default value), and
59
60       ·   the system terminfo database (/usr/share/terminfo).
61
62   ALIASES
63       This  is the same program as infotocap and captoinfo; usually those are
64       linked to, or copied from this program:
65
66       ·   When invoked as infotocap, tic sets the -I option.
67
68       ·   When invoked as captoinfo, tic sets the -C option.
69
70   OPTIONS
71       -0     restricts the output to a single line
72
73       -1     restricts the output to a single column
74
75       -a     tells tic to retain commented-out capabilities rather than  dis‐
76              carding them.  Capabilities are commented by prefixing them with
77              a period.  This sets the -x option, because it treats  the  com‐
78              mented-out  entries  as  user-defined  names.   If the source is
79              termcap, accept the 2-character names  required  by  version  6.
80              Otherwise these are ignored.
81
82       -C     Force  source translation to termcap format.  Note: this differs
83              from the -C option of infocmp(1M) in that  it  does  not  merely
84              translate capability names, but also translates terminfo strings
85              to termcap format.  Capabilities that are not  translatable  are
86              left  in  the entry under their terminfo names but commented out
87              with two preceding dots.  The actual  format  used  incorporates
88              some  improvements  for escaped characters from terminfo format.
89              For a stricter BSD-compatible translation, add the -K option.
90
91              If this is combined with -c,  tic  makes  additional  checks  to
92              report  cases  where  the  terminfo  values do not have an exact
93              equivalent in termcap form.  For example:
94
95              ·   sgr usually will not  convert,  because  termcap  lacks  the
96                  ability  to  work with more than two parameters, and because
97                  termcap lacks many of the arithmetic/logical operators  used
98                  in terminfo.
99
100              ·   capabilities  with more than one delay or with delays before
101                  the end of the string will not convert completely.
102
103       -c     tells tic to only check file for errors, including syntax  prob‐
104              lems  and  bad  use-links.   If  you  specify  -C (-I) with this
105              option, the code will print warnings about entries which,  after
106              use  resolution, are more than 1023 (4096) bytes long.  Due to a
107              fixed buffer length in older termcap libraries, as well as buggy
108              checking  for  the buffer length (and a documented limit in ter‐
109              minfo), these entries may cause core dumps with other  implemen‐
110              tations.
111
112              tic checks string capabilities to ensure that those with parame‐
113              ters will be valid expressions.  It does this check only for the
114              predefined string capabilities; those which are defined with the
115              -x option are ignored.
116
117       -D     tells tic to print the database locations that it  knows  about,
118              and exit.  The first location shown is the one to which it would
119              write compiled terminal descriptions.  If tic  is  not  able  to
120              find  a writable database location according to the rules summa‐
121              rized above, it will print a diagnostic and exit with  an  error
122              rather than printing a list of database locations.
123
124       -e names
125              Limit  writes  and translations to the following comma-separated
126              list of terminals.  If any name or alias of a  terminal  matches
127              one  of  the  names  in  the  list, the entry will be written or
128              translated as normal.  Otherwise no output will be generated for
129              it.   The  option  value is interpreted as a file containing the
130              list if it contains a '/'.  (Note: depending on how tic was com‐
131              piled, this option may require -I or -C.)
132
133       -f     Display     complex     terminfo     strings    which    contain
134              if/then/else/endif expressions indented for readability.
135
136       -G     Display constant literals in  decimal  form  rather  than  their
137              character equivalents.
138
139       -g     Display  constant  character literals in quoted form rather than
140              their decimal equivalents.
141
142       -I     Force source translation to terminfo format.
143
144       -K     Suppress some longstanding ncurses extensions to termcap format,
145              e.g., "\s" for space.
146
147       -L     Force  source  translation  to  terminfo format using the long C
148              variable names listed in <term.h>
149
150       -N     Disable smart defaults.  Normally, when translating from termcap
151              to  terminfo,  the  compiler makes a number of assumptions about
152              the  defaults  of  string   capabilities   reset1_string,   car‐
153              riage_return,  cursor_left,  cursor_down,  scroll_forward,  tab,
154              newline, key_backspace, key_left, and key_down, then attempts to
155              use  obsolete termcap capabilities to deduce correct values.  It
156              also normally suppresses output of obsolete termcap capabilities
157              such  as bs.  This option forces a more literal translation that
158              also preserves the obsolete capabilities.
159
160       -odir  Write compiled entries to given  database  location.   Overrides
161              the TERMINFO environment variable.
162
163       -Qn    Rather  than  show  source  in terminfo (text) format, print the
164              compiled (binary) format in hexadecimal or base64 form,  depend‐
165              ing on the option's value:
166
167               1  hexadecimal
168
169               2  base64
170
171               3  hexadecimal and base64
172
173       -q     Suppress  comments  and  blank  lines  when  showing  translated
174              source.
175
176       -Rsubset
177              Restrict output to a given subset.  This option is for use  with
178              archaic  versions  of  terminfo  like  those on SVr1, Ultrix, or
179              HP/UX that do not support the full set of SVR4/XSI  Curses  ter‐
180              minfo;  and  outright  broken ports like AIX 3.x that have their
181              own extensions incompatible with  SVr4/XSI.   Available  subsets
182              are "SVr1", "Ultrix", "HP", "BSD" and "AIX"; see terminfo(5) for
183              details.
184
185       -r     Force entry resolution (so there are no remaining  tc  capabili‐
186              ties)  even  when doing translation to termcap format.  This may
187              be needed if you are preparing a  termcap  file  for  a  termcap
188              library  (such as GNU termcap through version 1.3 or BSD termcap
189              through 4.3BSD) that does not handle  multiple  tc  capabilities
190              per entry.
191
192       -s     Summarize  the  compile  by  showing  the database location into
193              which entries are written, and the number of entries  which  are
194              compiled.
195
196       -T     eliminates  size-restrictions  on  the  generated text.  This is
197              mainly useful for  testing  and  analysis,  since  the  compiled
198              descriptions  are limited (e.g., 1023 for termcap, 4096 for ter‐
199              minfo).
200
201       -t     tells tic to discard commented-out capabilities.  Normally  when
202              translating  from  terminfo to termcap, untranslatable capabili‐
203              ties are commented-out.
204
205       -U   tells tic to not post-process the data after  parsing  the  source
206            file.  Normally, it infers data which is commonly missing in older
207            terminfo data, or in termcaps.
208
209       -V   reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program, and
210            exits.
211
212       -vn  specifies that (verbose) output be written to standard error trace
213            information showing tic's progress.
214
215            The optional parameter n is a number  from  1  to  10,  inclusive,
216            indicating the desired level of detail of information.  If ncurses
217            is built  without  tracing  support,  the  optional  parameter  is
218            ignored.  If n is omitted, the default level is 1.  If n is speci‐
219            fied and greater than 1, the level of detail is increased.
220
221            The debug flag levels are as follows:
222
223            1      Names of files created and linked
224
225            2      Information related to the “use” facility
226
227            3      Statistics from the hashing algorithm
228
229            5      String-table memory allocations
230
231            7      Entries into the string-table
232
233            8      List of tokens encountered by scanner
234
235            9      All values computed in construction of the hash table
236
237            If the debug level n is not given, it is taken to be one.
238
239       -W   By itself, the -w  option  will  not  force  long  strings  to  be
240            wrapped.  Use the -W option to do this.
241
242            If  you specify both -f and -W options, the latter is ignored when
243            -f has already split the line.
244
245       -wn  specifies the width of the output.  The parameter is optional.  If
246            it is omitted, it defaults to 60.
247
248       -x   Treat  unknown  capabilities  as  user-defined (see user_caps(5)).
249            That is, if you supply a capability name which tic does not recog‐
250            nize,  it will infer its type (boolean, number or string) from the
251            syntax and make an extended table entry  for  that.   User-defined
252            capability strings whose name begins with “k” are treated as func‐
253            tion keys.
254
255   PARAMETERS
256       file   contains one or more terminfo terminal  descriptions  in  source
257              format   [see   terminfo(5)].   Each  description  in  the  file
258              describes the capabilities of a particular terminal.
259
260              If file is “-”, then the data is read from the  standard  input.
261              The file parameter may also be the path of a character-device.
262
263   PROCESSING
264       All  but  one  of  the capabilities recognized by tic are documented in
265       terminfo(5).  The exception is the use capability.
266
267       When a use=entry-name field is discovered in a terminal entry currently
268       being  compiled,  tic  reads  in the binary from /usr/share/terminfo to
269       complete the entry.  (Entries created from file  will  be  used  first.
270       tic  duplicates  the  capabilities in entry-name for the current entry,
271       with the exception of those capabilities that explicitly are defined in
272       the current entry.
273
274       When  an  entry, e.g., entry_name_1, contains a use=entry_name_2 field,
275       any  canceled  capabilities  in  entry_name_2  must  also   appear   in
276       entry_name_1  before  use=  for  these  capabilities  to be canceled in
277       entry_name_1.
278
279       Total compiled entries cannot exceed 4096 bytes.  The name field cannot
280       exceed  512  bytes.   Terminal names exceeding the maximum alias length
281       (32 characters on systems with long filenames, 14 characters otherwise)
282       will  be  truncated  to  the maximum alias length and a warning message
283       will be printed.
284

HISTORY

286       System V Release 2 provided  a  tic  utility.   It  accepted  a  single
287       option:  -v  (optionally  followed  by  a  number).   According to Ross
288       Ridge's comment in mytinfo, this version of tic was unable to represent
289       cancelled capabilities.
290
291       System  V  Release 3 provided a different tic utility, written by Pavel
292       Curtis, (originally named “compile” in pcurses).  This added an  option
293       -c  to check the file for errors, with the caveat that errors in “use=”
294       links would not be reported.  System V Release 3 documented a few warn‐
295       ing messages which did not appear in pcurses.  While the program itself
296       was changed little as development continued with System  V  Release  4,
297       the table of capabilities grew from 180 (pcurses) to 464 (Solaris).
298
299       In  early  development of ncurses (1993), Zeyd Ben-Halim used the table
300       from mytinfo to extend the  pcurses  table  to  469  capabilities  (456
301       matched  SVr4, 8 were only in SVr4, 13 were not in SVr4).  Of those 13,
302       11 were ultimately discarded (perhaps to  match  the  draft  of  X/Open
303       Curses).   The exceptions were memory_lock_above and memory_unlock (see
304       user_caps(5)).
305
306       Eric Raymond incorporated parts of mytinfo into  ncurses  to  implement
307       the  termcap-to-terminfo  source conversion, and extended that to begin
308       development of the corresponding terminfo-to-termcap source conversion,
309       Thomas  Dickey  completed  that  development over the course of several
310       years.
311
312       In 1999, Thomas Dickey added the  -x  option  to  support  user-defined
313       capabilities.
314
315       In  2010,  Roy  Marples provided a tic program and terminfo library for
316       NetBSD.  That implementation  adapts  several  features  from  ncurses,
317       including tic's -x option.
318
319       The  -c  option  tells tic to check for problems in the terminfo source
320       file.  Continued development provides additional checks:
321
322       ·   pcurses had 8 warnings
323
324       ·   ncurses in 1996 had 16 warnings
325
326       ·   Solaris (SVr4) curses has 28 warnings
327
328       ·   NetBSD tic in 2019 has 19 warnings.
329
330       ·   ncurses in 2019 has 96 warnings
331
332       The checking done in ncurses' tic helps with the conversion to termcap,
333       as well as pointing out errors and inconsistencies.  It is also used to
334       ensure consistency with the user-defined capabilities.  There  are  527
335       distinct  capabilities  in ncurses' terminal database; 128 of those are
336       user-defined.
337

PORTABILITY

339       X/Open Curses, Issue 7 (2009) provides a brief description of tic.   It
340       lists  one  option:  -c.  The omission of -v is unexpected.  The change
341       history states that  the  description  is  derived  from  True64  UNIX.
342       According  to  its  manual  pages,  that  system  also supported the -v
343       option.
344
345       Shortly after Issue 7 was released,  Tru64  was  discontinued.   As  of
346       2019,  the  surviving  implementations  of tic are SVr4 (AIX, HP-UX and
347       Solaris), ncurses and NetBSD curses.  The SVr4 tic programs all support
348       the  -v option.  The NetBSD tic program follows X/Open's documentation,
349       omitting the -v option.
350
351       The X/Open rationale states that some implementations of tic read  ter‐
352       minal  descriptions  from  the  standard input if the file parameter is
353       omitted.  None of these implementations do that.  Further, it  comments
354       that some may choose to read from ”./terminfo.src” but that is obsoles‐
355       cent behavior from SVr2, and is not (for example) a documented  feature
356       of SVr3.
357
358   COMPATIBILITY
359       There  is  some  evidence  that  historic  tic  implementations treated
360       description fields with no whitespace in them as additional aliases  or
361       short names.  This tic does not do that, but it does warn when descrip‐
362       tion fields may be treated that way and check them for dangerous  char‐
363       acters.
364
365   EXTENSIONS
366       Unlike  the  SVr4 tic command, this implementation can actually compile
367       termcap sources.  In fact, entries in terminfo and termcap  syntax  can
368       be  mixed  in  a  single  source file.  See terminfo(5) for the list of
369       termcap names taken to be equivalent to terminfo names.
370
371       The SVr4 manual pages are not clear on the  resolution  rules  for  use
372       capabilities.   This  implementation  of tic will find use targets any‐
373       where in the source file, or anywhere in the file tree rooted  at  TER‐
374       MINFO  (if TERMINFO is defined), or in the user's $HOME/.terminfo data‐
375       base (if it exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file tree of
376       compiled entries.
377
378       The  error  messages  from this tic have the same format as GNU C error
379       messages, and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's compile facility.
380
381       Aside from -c and -v, options are not portable:
382
383       ·   Most of tic's options are not supported by SVr4 tic:
384
385           -0 -1 -C -G -I -N -R -T -V -a -e -f -g -o -r -s -t -x
386
387       ·   The NetBSD tic  supports a few of the ncurses options
388
389           -a -o -x
390
391           and adds -S (a feature which does the same thing  as  infocmp's  -e
392           and -E options).
393
394       The SVr4 -c mode does not report bad “use=” links.
395
396       System  V  does  not  compile  entries  to  or  read  entries from your
397       $HOME/.terminfo database unless TERMINFO is explicitly set to it.
398

FILES

400       /usr/share/terminfo/?/*
401            Compiled terminal description database.
402

SEE ALSO

404       infocmp(1M),   captoinfo(1M),   infotocap(1M),   toe(1M),   curses(3X),
405       term(5).  terminfo(5).  user_caps(5).
406
407       This describes ncurses version 6.1 (patch 20191109).
408

AUTHOR

410       Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and
411       Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
412
413
414
415                                                                       tic(1M)
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