@b0rk Not only have I had this situation, I also have the reverse on my OpenBSD box, where pressing backspace inside tmux sends a control+h (0x08), so to actually backspace I need to type control+backspace (0x7F)

It works fine outside tmux. Gotta get that sorted out at some point. #termcap #terminfo

@bean

Of course, there is the O'Reilly book on #termcap and #terminfo, which does have that sort of documentation. But it hasn't been updated since 1992, thus tending to reinforce your point. (-:

@zirias @mpts

Actually you did: "Using termcap/terminfo directly nowadays means using curses." I hope that you understand the point that I was making, now. I don't want to belabour it. (-:

Things come along that expect either the #termcap compatibility functionality of #terminfo and break on true termcap, or the existence of true terminfo databases. Not often enough to press #FreeBSD to change, it appears, but still on a regular basis.

@_bapt_ @mpts

It's a good thing that I didn't say that it was, then. (-:

The whole point is that contrary to what @zirias said there are multiple independent libraries in different softwares and using #termcap/#terminfo directly does *not* mean using (n)curses, nor any lower-level library that it provides.

The world these days, especially the world outwith C/C++, rather works on the presumption that everyone is terminfo. #FreeBSD has brought porting up short several times.

@zirias @david_chisnall @mpts

It might be worth checking how well Write-Progress and its ilk work with only #termcap. And colourization of the error stream and suchlike.

@zirias @mpts

That's not enough. There are plenty of things that use #termcap/#terminfo directly without using (n)curses. And as you've seen there are cases where the two aren't exactly the same.

There is a persistent very slow trickle of instances where people come along with something new, which works with terminfo (or its termcap compatibility shims) on every other operating system, and true termcap turns out to be a gotcha in some subtle way. Because no-one targets it any more.

@mpts @zirias

No. #FreeBSD provides only #termcap as standard right now. #terminfo is only available as a port.

It's possibly the only mainstream operating system where this is still the case. NetBSD and OpenBSD both provide terminfo. I haven't checked Illumos.

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/tree/main/share/termcap

@zirias @JdeBP Wait, #termcap is still a thing in base?

@JdeBP @zirias #FreeBSD is using #terminfo instead of #termcap as of 2024.

@JdeBP AFAIK, base #curses in #FreeBSD 14 already uses #terminfo (instead of the bundled #termcap) *if* it is installed (as a package). But sure, having it directly in base and getting rid of termcap would be much nicer.

Never say something is finished

Browsing https://16colo.rs/ I found some #ansiart file that immediately had my attention because it crashed my #terminfo writer. Turns out attempting fallback to #termcap names makes no sense with terminfo ... although it shouldn't hurt either, but it did with "xterm-256color" on #FreeBSD for the "blink"/"mb" capability, "mb" returned something, but something "else" ... so I fixed that.

This file was strange enough to use it for more testing, it had "blinking" characters (according to #SAUCE), although ignoring that and using bright colors instead looked much more sane, see two screenshots for comparison (oh wow, #xterm can actually blink? although not like #VGA would...)

Anyways, I found a lot more things to optimize and fix in both my "plain ANSI" and "terminfo" color writers!

So, there will be #dos2ansi v1.2 soon. Will probably add some small feature first, just "because"

New pre-release of dos2ansi: v0.2

* Works on #Windows, win32 binary (cross-compiled on #FreeBSD) attached
* Selectable input #codepage (so far only #cp437, #cp850 and #cp858)
* Selectable output format, #utf8, #utf16 or #utf16le, with or without #BOM

Still a few things to add, e.g. use #termcap/#terminfo or Windows Console API for "color output" when applicable ... we will see

https://github.com/Zirias/dos2ansi/releases/tag/v0.2

@n Also, note that #FreeBSD moved from #termcap to #terminfo in newer releases, which might be why the troubleshooting tips you find online are not working.