Gitiles
Code Review Sign In
gerrit.omnirom.org / android_external_libncurses / c1bcd6dd9af6865867a3d6716e4c1a45021a90e5 / . / doc / html / man / term.5.html
blob: 50fdc55075556f1af3a8505fbb53440f76e0fab8 [file] [log] [blame]
Amit Daniel Kachhape6a01f52011-07-20 11:45:59 +0530[diff] [blame]1<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
2<!--
3 ****************************************************************************
4 * Copyright (c) 1998-2004,2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
5 * *
6 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a *
7 * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the *
8 * "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including *
9 * without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, *
10 * distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell *
11 * copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is *
12 * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: *
13 * *
14 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included *
15 * in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. *
16 * *
17 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS *
18 * OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF *
19 * MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. *
20 * IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, *
21 * DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR *
22 * OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR *
23 * THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. *
24 * *
25 * Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright *
26 * holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the *
27 * sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written *
28 * authorization. *
29 ****************************************************************************
30 * @Id: term.5,v 1.19 2006/12/24 18:12:38 tom Exp @
31-->
32<HTML>
33<HEAD>
34<TITLE>term 5</TITLE>
35<link rev=made href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">
36<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
37</HEAD>
38<BODY>
39<H1>term 5</H1>
40<HR>
41<PRE>
42<!-- Manpage converted by man2html 3.0.1 -->
43<STRONG><A HREF="term.5.html">term(5)</A></STRONG> <STRONG><A HREF="term.5.html">term(5)</A></STRONG>
44
45
46
47
48</PRE>
49<H2>NAME</H2><PRE>
50 term - format of compiled term file.
51
52
53</PRE>
54<H2>SYNOPSIS</H2><PRE>
55 <STRONG>term</STRONG>
56
57
58</PRE>
59<H2>DESCRIPTION</H2><PRE>
60 <STRONG>STORAGE</STRONG> <STRONG>LOCATION</STRONG>
61 Compiled terminfo descriptions are placed under the direc-
62 tory <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo</STRONG>. Two configurations are sup-
63 ported (when building the ncurses libraries):
64
65 <STRONG>directory</STRONG> <STRONG>tree</STRONG>
66 A two-level scheme is used to avoid a linear search
67 of a huge UNIX system directory: <STRONG>/usr/share/ter-</STRONG>
68 <STRONG>minfo/c/name</STRONG> where <EM>name</EM> is the name of the terminal,
69 and <EM>c</EM> is the first character of <EM>name</EM>. Thus, <EM>act4</EM> can
70 be found in the file <STRONG>/usr/share/terminfo/a/act4</STRONG>.
71 Synonyms for the same terminal are implemented by
72 multiple links to the same compiled file.
73
74 <STRONG>hashed</STRONG> <STRONG>database</STRONG>
75 Using Berkeley database, two types of records are
76 stored: the terminfo data in the same format as
77 stored in a directory tree with the terminfo's pri-
78 mary name as a key, and records containing only
79 aliases pointing to the primary name.
80
81 If built to write hashed databases, ncurses can still
82 read terminfo databases organized as a directory
83 tree, but cannot write entries into the directory
84 tree. It can write (or rewrite) entries in the
85 hashed database.
86
87 ncurses distinguishes the two cases in the TERMINFO
88 and TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable by assuming a
89 directory tree for entries that correspond to an
90 existing directory, and hashed database otherwise.
91
92 <STRONG>STORAGE</STRONG> <STRONG>FORMAT</STRONG>
93 The format has been chosen so that it will be the same on
94 all hardware. An 8 or more bit byte is assumed, but no
95 assumptions about byte ordering or sign extension are
96 made.
97
98 The compiled file is created with the <STRONG>tic</STRONG> program, and
99 read by the routine <EM>setupterm</EM>. The file is divided into
100 six parts: the header, terminal names, boolean flags, num-
101 bers, strings, and string table.
102
103 The header section begins the file. This section contains
104 six short integers in the format described below. These
105 integers are
106
107 (1) the magic number (octal 0432);
108
109 (2) the size, in bytes, of the names section;
110
111 (3) the number of bytes in the boolean section;
112
113 (4) the number of short integers in the numbers sec-
114 tion;
115
116 (5) the number of offsets (short integers) in the
117 strings section;
118
119 (6) the size, in bytes, of the string table.
120
121 Short integers are stored in two 8-bit bytes. The first
122 byte contains the least significant 8 bits of the value,
123 and the second byte contains the most significant 8 bits.
124 (Thus, the value represented is 256*second+first.) The
125 value -1 is represented by the two bytes 0377, 0377; other
126 negative values are illegal. This value generally means
127 that the corresponding capability is missing from this
128 terminal. Note that this format corresponds to the hard-
129 ware of the VAX and PDP-11 (that is, little-endian
130 machines). Machines where this does not correspond to the
131 hardware must read the integers as two bytes and compute
132 the little-endian value.
133
134 The terminal names section comes next. It contains the
135 first line of the terminfo description, listing the vari-
136 ous names for the terminal, separated by the `|' charac-
137 ter. The section is terminated with an ASCII NUL charac-
138 ter.
139
140 The boolean flags have one byte for each flag. This byte
141 is either 0 or 1 as the flag is present or absent. The
142 capabilities are in the same order as the file &lt;term.h&gt;.
143
144 Between the boolean section and the number section, a null
145 byte will be inserted, if necessary, to ensure that the
146 number section begins on an even byte (this is a relic of
147 the PDP-11's word-addressed architecture, originally
148 designed in to avoid IOT traps induced by addressing a
149 word on an odd byte boundary). All short integers are
150 aligned on a short word boundary.
151
152 The numbers section is similar to the flags section. Each
153 capability takes up two bytes, and is stored as a little-
154 endian short integer. If the value represented is -1, the
155 capability is taken to be missing.
156
157 The strings section is also similar. Each capability is
158 stored as a short integer, in the format above. A value
159 of -1 means the capability is missing. Otherwise, the
160 value is taken as an offset from the beginning of the
161 string table. Special characters in ^X or \c notation are
162 stored in their interpreted form, not the printing repre-
163 sentation. Padding information $&lt;nn&gt; and parameter infor-
164 mation %x are stored intact in uninterpreted form.
165
166 The final section is the string table. It contains all
167 the values of string capabilities referenced in the string
168 section. Each string is null terminated.
169
170 <STRONG>EXTENDED</STRONG> <STRONG>STORAGE</STRONG> <STRONG>FORMAT</STRONG>
171 The previous section describes the conventional terminfo
172 binary format. With some minor variations of the offsets
173 (see PORTABILITY), the same binary format is used in all
174 modern UNIX systems. Each system uses a predefined set of
175 boolean, number or string capabilities.
176
177 The ncurses libraries and applications support extended
178 terminfo binary format, allowing users to define capabili-
179 ties which are loaded at runtime. This extension is made
180 possible by using the fact that the other implementations
181 stop reading the terminfo data when they have reached the
182 end of the size given in the header. ncurses checks the
183 size, and if it exceeds that due to the predefined data,
184 continues to parse according to its own scheme.
185
186 First, it reads the extended header (5 short integers):
187
188 (1) count of extended boolean capabilities
189
190 (2) count of extended numeric capabilities
191
192 (3) count of extended string capabilities
193
194 (4) size of the extended string table in bytes.
195
196 (5) last offset of the extended string table in
197 bytes.
198
199 Using the counts and sizes, ncurses allocates arrays and
200 reads data for the extended capabilties in the same order
201 as the header information.
202
203 The extended string table contains values for string capa-
204 bilities. After the end of these values, it contains the
205 names for each of the extended capabilities in order,
206 e.g., booleans, then numbers and finally strings.
207
208
209</PRE>
210<H2>PORTABILITY</H2><PRE>
211 Note that it is possible for <EM>setupterm</EM> to expect a differ-
212 ent set of capabilities than are actually present in the
213 file. Either the database may have been updated since
214 <EM>setupterm</EM> has been recompiled (resulting in extra unrecog-
215 nized entries in the file) or the program may have been
216 recompiled more recently than the database was updated
217 (resulting in missing entries). The routine <EM>setupterm</EM>
218 must be prepared for both possibilities - this is why the
219 numbers and sizes are included. Also, new capabilities
220 must always be added at the end of the lists of boolean,
221 number, and string capabilities.
222
223 Despite the consistent use of little-endian for numbers
224 and the otherwise self-describing format, it is not wise
225 to count on portability of binary terminfo entries between
226 commercial UNIX versions. The problem is that there are
227 at least three versions of terminfo (under HP-UX, AIX, and
228 OSF/1) which diverged from System V terminfo after SVr1,
229 and have added extension capabilities to the string table
230 that (in the binary format) collide with System V and XSI
231 Curses extensions. See <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG> for detailed discus-
232 sion of terminfo source compatibility issues.
233
234
235</PRE>
236<H2>EXAMPLE</H2><PRE>
237 As an example, here is a hex dump of the description for
238 the Lear-Siegler ADM-3, a popular though rather stupid
239 early terminal:
240
241 adm3a|lsi adm3a,
242 am,
243 cols#80, lines#24,
244 bel=^G, clear= 32$&lt;1&gt;, cr=^M, cub1=^H, cud1=^J,
245 cuf1=^L, cup=\E=%p1%{32}%+%c%p2%{32}%+%c, cuu1=^K,
246 home=^^, ind=^J,
247
248 0000 1a 01 10 00 02 00 03 00 82 00 31 00 61 64 6d 33 ........ ..1.adm3
249 0010 61 7c 6c 73 69 20 61 64 6d 33 61 00 00 01 50 00 a|lsi ad m3a...P.
250 0020 ff ff 18 00 ff ff 00 00 02 00 ff ff ff ff 04 00 ........ ........
251 0030 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 0a 00 25 00 27 00 ff ff ........ ..%.'...
252 0040 29 00 ff ff ff ff 2b 00 ff ff 2d 00 ff ff ff ff ).....+. ..-.....
253 0050 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
254 0060 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
255 0070 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
256 0080 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
257 0090 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
258 00a0 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
259 00b0 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
260 00c0 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
261 00d0 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
262 00e0 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
263 00f0 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
264 0100 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
265 0110 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ........ ........
266 0120 ff ff ff ff ff ff 2f 00 07 00 0d 00 1a 24 3c 31 ....../. .....$&lt;1
267 0130 3e 00 1b 3d 25 70 31 25 7b 33 32 7d 25 2b 25 63 &gt;..=%p1% {32}%+%c
268 0140 25 70 32 25 7b 33 32 7d 25 2b 25 63 00 0a 00 1e %p2%{32} %+%c....
269 0150 00 08 00 0c 00 0b 00 0a 00 ........ .
270
271
272
273</PRE>
274<H2>LIMITS</H2><PRE>
275 Some limitations: total compiled entries cannot exceed
276 4096 bytes. The name field cannot exceed 128 bytes.
277
278
279</PRE>
280<H2>FILES</H2><PRE>
281 /usr/share/terminfo/*/* compiled terminal capability data
282 base
283
284
285</PRE>
286<H2>SEE ALSO</H2><PRE>
287 <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">curses(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>.
288
289
290</PRE>
291<H2>AUTHORS</H2><PRE>
292 Thomas E. Dickey
293 extended terminfo format for ncurses 5.0
294 hashed database support for ncurses 5.6
295
296 Eric S. Raymond
297
298
299
300 <STRONG><A HREF="term.5.html">term(5)</A></STRONG>
301</PRE>
302<HR>
303<ADDRESS>
304Man(1) output converted with
305<a href="http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/man2html.html">man2html</a>
306</ADDRESS>
307</BODY>
308</HTML>