> - the netbsd pkgsrc patches prevent ncurses from installing a tput(1) which
> understands terminfo  (Why?)

Not sure about this.  Is it just that it doesn't install ncurses' tput?

> - netbsd libcurses seems totally ignorant of terminfo, so vi, less, etc.
> don't like me anymore

Yes - netbsd libcurses only uses termcap.

> What's the best way to deal with this?  I've currently got a ~/.termcap file
> containing selected entries created from the ncurses terminfo.src using
> infotocap.  This mostly works, but seems pretty cumbersome.  It also doesn't
> work for some of the variants, including "nsterm-c-s-acs",the one I'd prefer
> to use.  

Having an entry in your environment, ~/.termcap or the system termcap should
make no difference.  Have you tried editing the system termcap and rebuilding
termcap.db with the new entries?

It should be possible to work out what's going wrong by building a libcurses
with -DDEBUG_CURSES -DFULL_DEBUG and looking at the __curses.out file.

> What's the netbsd policy on termcap updates and/or terminfo support?  Should
> the netbsd termcap file be brought up to date?  Do the historical length
> limits on termcap entries apply to the netbsd implementation?

I guess that it's fallen through the cracks a bit.  I'm planning to go
through the PR database fixing termcap-related ones (although I was hoping
to get curses ones done first).  So, submitting a PR would be fine (I see
that you've already done one ;-).  I'll also see if we need to take entries
from ncurses that are missing in our termcap.

We don't have the historical length limit on termcap entries anymore.
However, some programs do assume this, so it's best to put the most used
entries at the start of the entry.

J

-- 
                    My other computer also runs NetBSD
                          http://www.netbsd.org/