17 Sep
2019
17 Sep
'19
4:33 a.m.
On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 6:47 AM Jon Steinhart <jon(a)fourwinds.com> wrote:
Since we like debating the merits of old technology, somebody can kick off
a termcap versus terminfo discussion :-)
Felt like of-its-time NIH. Since the codes to drive an ADM5 were the
same in either source, and since the intent was the same, it was just
a giant *why* for me.
I didn't get why binary file either. If the cost of reading the
termcap DB was a significant hit on your program, I think you just
proved you were a robot and would be defeated by a captcha. Having to
compile things is a drag.
It was probably a side effect of the sequence of universities and
institutions I worked at (York, Leeds, York, UCL, CSIRO, UQ) that they
were almost exclusively v7->32V->BSD->SunOS shops and so the emergence
of SYSV was basically occluded to me, and so SYSV-isms (with the
exception of RFS and the pre-gnu getopt() which leaked into UUCP
newsgroups I read somehow).
Terminfo just didn't feel very *relevant*