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List:       ncurses-bug
Subject:    Re: Request for inclusion of new xterm-kitty terminfo
From:       Thomas Dickey <dickey () his ! com>
Date:       2018-09-10 20:12:55
Message-ID: 20180910201255.GA3087 () prl-debian8-64 ! jexium-island ! net
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On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 11:28:00AM -0400, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> [replying only to list]
> 
> At 2018-09-10T09:32:44+0100, Nicholas Marriott wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 07:53:24AM +0530, Kovid Goyal wrote:
> > > Sure I can dig up examples if needed, but this is a very common hack
> > > used by many terminal emulators. For example, termite uses xterm-termite
> > > gnome-terminal uses xterm-256color, konsole uses xterm-256color -- the
> > > list goes on and on. The question is why is it a problem for ncurses in
> > > the first place. Does xterm have some kind of most favored terminal
> > > status that gives it permanent ownership over all xterm-* names. And
> > > if so, IMO it is highly unfair. 
> > 
> > The solution to applications making assumptions based on a terminfo
> > entry's name rather than its capabilities is to fix those applications,
> > not to add a redundant "xterm-" prefix for terminals which are not
> > related to xterm.
> 
> Don't modern versions of ncurses have all sorts of building blocks to
> help terminfo entry writers compose feature-based descriptions of new
> terminal types?  It seems to me that Thomas has spent quite a bit of
> effort not only making this possible, but in defining easily-digestible
> chunks to be used thus.

That isn't the issue here.  What's under discussion is one of those
non-ncurses scenarios which pretends that the actual name of the
terminal description tells you what its detailed capabilities are.

There are examples of that in the ncurses faq, such as this:

https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#not_library_users

But also, the complaint seen above is rooted in the mindset mentioned here:

https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#xterm_generic

(applications which use ncurses's database in a shell script would use "tput"
to find information, so there's no point in providing examples of hard-coded
behavior).

Earlier issues alluded to are addressed here:

https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#xterm_16MegaColors
https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-slang.html

as well as

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses/2018-02/msg00007.html

And regarding licensing, recall this:

https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tack.html

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

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