Re: Converting termcap entries to terminfo entries

[Roy Marples <roy%marples.name@localhost>]

Hi Brian

On 22/10/2019 23:14, Brian Buhrow wrote:
> 	hello.  I'm in the process of building NetBSD-9.0 systems in an effort
> to consider upgrading from my fleet of NetBSD-5.2 systems to NetBSD-9.  As
> a long time window(1) user, I have a termcap entry for the window terminal
> type that I use on systems that I ssh into from window(1) panes.  It is my
> practice to put a termcap and a terminfo database in my home directory on
> such systems, so that regardless of whether a program at the far end wants
> termcap or terminfo, it will be able to draw on the screen in full screen
> mode.  what I need is a way of converting the termcap entries I have into a
> terminfo source file that tic(1) can compile into a .cdb file which can be
> used on NetBSD-9 systems.  I have  an older version of captoinfo(1) from
> the ncurses pkg, but it produces binary terminfo output unsuitable for the
> tic(1) program.  I'm fuly aware that window(1) has been deprecated in favor
> of tmux(1), but I haven't climbed the learning curve of tmux(1) yet and I'm
> not sure it does everything I get from the window(1) program.
> 	So, can someone tell me what program I should use to convert termcap
> files into terminfo source files suitable for the new terminfo libraries in
> NetBSD-8 and 9?

We don't have any specific program as such, but terminfo(5) has a 
section "Fetching Compiled Descriptions"

If the environment variable TERMCAP is available and does not begin with
a slash (`/') then it will be translated into terminfo and compiled as
above.  If its name matches TERM then it is used.

So you can use infocmp(8) like so:

$ TERM=captest 
TERMCAP="captest|:al=3*\E^R:am:bl=^G:cd=16*\E^C:ce=16\E^U:cl=2*^L:cm=\Ea%+ 
%+ :" infocmp
# Reconstructed from $TERMCAP
captest,
        am,
        bel=^G, clear=\f$<2*/>, cr=^M, cud1=^J,
        cup=\Ea%p1%{32}%+%c%p2%{32}%+%c, ed=\E\003$<16*/>, el=\E\025$<16/>,
        ht=^I, il1=\E\022$<3*/>, ind=^J, kbs=^H, kcub1=^H, kcud1=^J,
        nel=^M^J,

I don't know how accurate the conversion will be for you as it's not 
entirely a 1-1 mapping and I think some assumptions are made (I've not 
looked at the source for a while), but hopefully it's good enough.

Might be time consusing with many termcap entries to convert, but it 
should be scriptable at least. Is this good enough for you?

Roy