>  I'll admit that I'm very disappointed that the termcap routines 
> depend on curses.h (my faith has been shaken sorely! :-).

Most bizarre of all is that the termcap routines are depending on curses.h
for prototypes of termcap routines!

Perhaps the correct solution in this case is to create a termcap.h for
the termcap routines, and let curses.h include *that*.  (Yes, that still
leaves open the issue of where the header files should go, but it seems to
me that this was tripped over because of something that is fundamentally
*wrong*.)