GNU termcap For Linux

GNU termcap is a project which enables programs to use display terminals in a terminal-independent manner.

The GNU termcap library does not place an arbitrary limit on the size of termcap entries, unlike most other termcap libraries.

Most of this package is also distributed with GNU Emacs, but it is available in this separate distribution to make it easier to install as -ltermcap. However, use of termcap is discouraged.

Termcap is being phased out in favor of the terminfo-based ncurses library, which contains an emulation of the termcap library routines in addition to an excellent curses implementation. ncurses is available from the usual GNU archive sites.

This package contains termcap.src, the latest official termcap data file. By default, it is not installed. The current version contains some entries that are more than 1023 bytes long, which is the largest value that is safe to use with the many historical applications that only allocate a 1024 byte termcap buffer (telnet, for example).

If you make sure that all of your programs allocate buffers of at least 2500 bytes, or let the termcap library do it by passing a NULL pointer, then it is safe to install the new termcap file, as described below.

You can give configure two special options: --enable-install-termcap install the termcap data file --with-termcap=FILE use data file FILE instead of /etc/termcap

What's New in This Release:

� Termcap data file updated. � Bug fixes and portability changes.