This is the GNU termcap library -- a library of C functions that enable programs to send control strings to terminals in a way independent of the terminal type. The GNU termcap library does not place an arbitrary limit on the size of termcap entries, unlike most other termcap libraries. Most of this package is also distributed with GNU Emacs, but it is available in this separate distribution to make it easier to install as -ltermcap. However, use of termcap is discouraged. Termcap is being phased out in favor of the terminfo-based ncurses library, which contains an emulation of the termcap library routines in addition to an excellent curses implementation. ncurses is available from the usual GNU archive sites. See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions. Additionally: This package contains termcap.src, the latest official termcap data file. By default, it is not installed. The current version contains some entries that are more than 1023 bytes long, which is the largest value that is safe to use with the many historical applications that only allocate a 1024 byte termcap buffer (telnet, for example). If you make sure that all of your programs allocate buffers of at least 2500 bytes, or let the termcap library do it by passing a NULL pointer, then it is safe to install the new termcap file, as described below. You can give configure two special options: --enable-install-termcap install the termcap data file --with-termcap=FILE use data file FILE instead of /etc/termcap Please report any bugs in this library to bug-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu. You can check which version of the library you have by using the RCS `ident' command on libtermcap.a.
