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<TITLE>tic 1m</TITLE>
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<H1>tic 1m</H1>
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<PRE>
<!-- Manpage converted by man2html 3.0.1 -->
<STRONG><A HREF="tic.1m.html">tic(1m)</A></STRONG> <STRONG><A HREF="tic.1m.html">tic(1m)</A></STRONG>
</PRE>
<H2>NAME</H2><PRE>
<STRONG>tic</STRONG> - the <EM>terminfo</EM> entry-description compiler
</PRE>
<H2>SYNOPSIS</H2><PRE>
<STRONG>tic</STRONG> [<STRONG>-1CGILNTUVacfgrstx</STRONG>] [<STRONG>-e</STRONG> <EM>names</EM>] [<STRONG>-o</STRONG> <EM>dir</EM>] [<STRONG>-R</STRONG> <EM>subset</EM>]
[<STRONG>-v</STRONG>[<EM>n</EM>]] [<STRONG>-w</STRONG>[<EM>n</EM>]] <EM>file</EM>
</PRE>
<H2>DESCRIPTION</H2><PRE>
The command <STRONG>tic</STRONG> translates a <STRONG>terminfo</STRONG> file from source
format into compiled format. The compiled format is nec-
essary for use with the library routines in <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">ncurses(3x)</A></STRONG>.
The results are normally placed in the system terminfo
directory <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG>. There are two ways to
change this behavior.
First, you may override the system default by setting the
variable <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> in your shell environment to a valid
(existing) directory name.
Secondly, if <STRONG>tic</STRONG> cannot get access to <EM>/usr/share/terminfo</EM>
or your TERMINFO directory, it looks for the directory
<EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM>; if that directory exists, the entry is
placed there.
Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check
for a TERMINFO directory first, look at <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM> if
TERMINFO is not set, and finally look in <EM>/usr/share/ter-</EM>
<EM>minfo</EM>.
<STRONG>-1</STRONG> restricts the output to a single column
<STRONG>-a</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to retain commented-out capabilities
rather than discarding them. Capabilities are com-
mented by prefixing them with a period. This sets
the <STRONG>-x</STRONG> 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.
<STRONG>-C</STRONG> Force source translation to termcap format. Note:
this differs from the <STRONG>-C</STRONG> option of <STRONG><A HREF="infocmp.1m.html">infocmp(1m)</A></STRONG> in
that it does not merely translate capability names,
but also translates terminfo strings to termcap
format. Capabilities that are not translatable are
left in the entry under their terminfo names but
commented out with two preceding dots.
<STRONG>-c</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to only check <EM>file</EM> for errors, including
syntax problems and bad use links. If you specify
<STRONG>-C</STRONG> (<STRONG>-I</STRONG>) with this option, the code will print warn-
ings 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.
<STRONG>-e</STRONG> <EM>names</EM>
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 con-
taining the list if it contains a '/'. (Note:
depending on how tic was compiled, this option may
require <STRONG>-I</STRONG> or <STRONG>-C</STRONG>.)
<STRONG>-f</STRONG> Display complex terminfo strings which contain
if/then/else/endif expressions indented for read-
ability.
<STRONG>-G</STRONG> Display constant literals in decimal form rather
than their character equivalents.
<STRONG>-g</STRONG> Display constant character literals in quoted form
rather than their decimal equivalents.
<STRONG>-I</STRONG> Force source translation to terminfo format.
<STRONG>-L</STRONG> Force source translation to terminfo format using
the long C variable names listed in &lt;<STRONG>term.h</STRONG>&gt;
<STRONG>-N</STRONG> Disable smart defaults. Normally, when translating
from termcap to terminfo, the compiler makes a num-
ber of assumptions about the defaults of string
capabilities <STRONG>reset1_string</STRONG>, <STRONG>carriage_return</STRONG>, <STRONG>cur-</STRONG>
<STRONG>sor_left</STRONG>, <STRONG>cursor_down</STRONG>, <STRONG>scroll_forward</STRONG>, <STRONG>tab</STRONG>, <STRONG>new-</STRONG>
<STRONG>line</STRONG>, <STRONG>key_backspace</STRONG>, <STRONG>key_left</STRONG>, and <STRONG>key_down</STRONG>, then
attempts to use obsolete termcap capabilities to
deduce correct values. It also normally suppresses
output of obsolete termcap capabilities such as <STRONG>bs</STRONG>.
This option forces a more literal translation that
also preserves the obsolete capabilities.
<STRONG>-o</STRONG><EM>dir</EM> Write compiled entries to given directory. Over-
rides the TERMINFO environment variable.
<STRONG>-R</STRONG><EM>subset</EM>
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 out-
right 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 <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> for details.
<STRONG>-r</STRONG> 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 multi-
ple tc capabilities per entry.
<STRONG>-s</STRONG> Summarize the compile by showing the directory into
which entries are written, and the number of
entries which are compiled.
<STRONG>-T</STRONG> 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).
<STRONG>-t</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> to discard commented-out capabilities.
Normally when translating from terminfo to termcap,
untranslatable capabilities are commented-out.
<STRONG>-U</STRONG> tells <STRONG>tic</STRONG> 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 term-
caps.
<STRONG>-V</STRONG> reports the version of ncurses which was used in this
program, and exits.
<STRONG>-v</STRONG><EM>n</EM> specifies that (verbose) output be written to stan-
dard error trace information showing <STRONG>tic</STRONG>'s progress.
The optional parameter <EM>n</EM> is a number from 1 to 10,
inclusive, indicating the desired level of detail of
information. If <EM>n</EM> is omitted, the default level is
1. If <EM>n</EM> is specified and greater than 1, the level
of detail is increased.
<STRONG>-w</STRONG><EM>n</EM> specifies the width of the output. The parameter is
optional. If it is omitted, it defaults to 60.
<STRONG>-x</STRONG> Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined. That is,
if you supply a capability name which <STRONG>tic</STRONG> 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.
<EM>file</EM> contains one or more <STRONG>terminfo</STRONG> terminal descriptions
in source format [see <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>]. Each description
in the file describes the capabilities of a particu-
lar terminal.
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 ta-
ble
If the debug level <EM>n</EM> is not given, it is taken to be one.
All but one of the capabilities recognized by <STRONG>tic</STRONG> are doc-
umented in <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>. The exception is the <STRONG>use</STRONG> capabil-
ity.
When a <STRONG>use</STRONG>=<EM>entry</EM>-<EM>name</EM> field is discovered in a terminal
entry currently being compiled, <STRONG>tic</STRONG> reads in the binary
from <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG> to complete the entry. (Entries
created from <EM>file</EM> will be used first. If the environment
variable <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> is set, that directory is searched
instead of <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG>.) <STRONG>tic</STRONG> duplicates the capa-
bilities in <EM>entry</EM>-<EM>name</EM> for the current entry, with the
exception of those capabilities that explicitly are
defined in the current entry.
When an entry, e.g., <STRONG>entry_name_1</STRONG>, contains a
<STRONG>use=</STRONG><EM>entry</EM>_<EM>name</EM>_<EM>2</EM> field, any canceled capabilities in
<EM>entry</EM>_<EM>name</EM>_<EM>2</EM> must also appear in <STRONG>entry_name_1</STRONG> before <STRONG>use=</STRONG>
for these capabilities to be canceled in <STRONG>entry_name_1</STRONG>.
If the environment variable <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> is set, the compiled
results are placed there instead of <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG>.
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.
</PRE>
<H2>COMPATIBILITY</H2><PRE>
There is some evidence that historic <STRONG>tic</STRONG> implementations
treated description fields with no whitespace in them as
additional aliases or short names. This <STRONG>tic</STRONG> does not do
that, but it does warn when description fields may be
treated that way and check them for dangerous characters.
</PRE>
<H2>EXTENSIONS</H2><PRE>
Unlike the stock SVr4 <STRONG>tic</STRONG> 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 <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> 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 <STRONG>use</STRONG> capabilities. This implementation of <STRONG>tic</STRONG>
will find <STRONG>use</STRONG> targets anywhere in the source file, or any-
where in the file tree rooted at <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> (if <STRONG>TERMINFO</STRONG> is
defined), or in the user's <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM> directory (if
it exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file
tree of compiled entries.
The error messages from this <STRONG>tic</STRONG> have the same format as
GNU C error messages, and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's
compile facility.
The <STRONG>-C</STRONG>, <STRONG>-G</STRONG>, <STRONG>-I</STRONG>, <STRONG>-N</STRONG>, <STRONG>-R</STRONG>, <STRONG>-T</STRONG>, <STRONG>-V</STRONG>, <STRONG>-a</STRONG>, <STRONG>-e</STRONG>, <STRONG>-f</STRONG>, <STRONG>-g</STRONG>, <STRONG>-o</STRONG>, <STRONG>-r</STRONG>,
<STRONG>-s</STRONG>, <STRONG>-t</STRONG> and <STRONG>-x</STRONG> options are not supported under SVr4. The
SVr4 <STRONG>-c</STRONG> mode does not report bad use links.
System V does not compile entries to or read entries from
your <EM>$HOME/.terminfo</EM> directory unless TERMINFO is explic-
itly set to it.
</PRE>
<H2>FILES</H2><PRE>
<STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo/?/*</STRONG>
Compiled terminal description database.
</PRE>
<H2>SEE ALSO</H2><PRE>
<STRONG><A HREF="infocmp.1m.html">infocmp(1m)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="captoinfo.1m.html">captoinfo(1m)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="infotocap.1m.html">infotocap(1m)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="toe.1m.html">toe(1m)</A></STRONG>,
<STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">curses(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>.
This describes <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> version 5.6 (patch 20081011).
<STRONG><A HREF="tic.1m.html">tic(1m)</A></STRONG>
</PRE>
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