On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 12:11:03AM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> 
> I could imagine using something that doesn't attempt any optimisations
> - so directly generates are required byte sequences.

Yes, effectively that is what a Really Dumb (tm) termcap definition
will pretty much do.  Mind you, even with a really dumb terminal there
are some optimisations that can be done to speed things up.

> It is also worth considering how many terminals still exist that don't
> support the ansi cursor movement escape sequences.
> (Ok some museums might have at vt52
> 

There are still some but, really, that is moot.  You don't need to
drag in a full termcap database, you just need one entry.  The
difference between hardcoding escape sequences and using termcap is
very very minimal as the capabilities are parsed in at start up and
the relevant escape sequences kept in memory.

Having said that, the refresh code in libcurses really really could do
with a clean up.  Comments like "work around beehive bug blah blah
blah" indicate that there is some cruft there that could be axed.

-- 
Brett Lymn
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