All,
redisplay-tty.c still uses termcap. In most modern UNIX varaints,
terminfo is availible, and on those systems where both are availible,
the terminfo databases are frequently more up to date than the termcap
file.
It would be trivial to start using terminfo, and to be able to fall
back on termcap if terminfo cant work for a given system. I did just
this thing for the EPIC IRC client, and it works well.
One of the other advantages of terminfo is that you can use more than
two parameters to any given capability. You can only do that in termcap
if you roll out own tparam(). There are a few capabilities of great use
that use more than 2 parameters, most notably the wind cap. In the current
redisplay stuff we get the scrolling region (csr) cap but dont ever
use it, and we dont even retrieve the wind cap. Both of these can be
used to speed up redisplay dramatically on a TTY, and I would like to
make such improvements.
However, the redisplay stuff seems to be a feared piece of code and
folks are loathsomet o change it. So, before I go do a whole bunch
of work, does anyone have comments, questions or suggestions? Look
forward to hearing them
Kean.