On Tue, Jun 06, 2000 at 03:06:36PM -0500, Andy Loftus wrote: > I'm trying to install procps-2.0.6 (as required by kernel 2.2.15) and it fails > because it can't find termcap.h. > I don't know what termcap is but I get the impression that I don't need it > since it is part of oldlibs in dselect (and the description restates my > assumption, 'newer programs should link directly to ncurses').
termcap is a 'database' of TERMinal CAPabilities--back in the old days when minicomputers ran lots of dumb terminals (i.e. monitors with keyboards but little or no computing power of their own) there were many many types available. digital equipment was top of the heap with vt100 and later vt220, which most of the terminal-emulation programs (xterm, rxvt, telnet, ssh...) can emulate with no problem. the termcap database told unix (and now linux) what kinds of voodoo are necessary to, for example, make blue-on-yellow text, or how to position the cursor, and much more. there's a new-style database called terminfo that does basically the same thing, although instead of having one huge term-capability file it's got them all broken out under /etc/terminfo/*... as to whether or not it's necessary, i'd imagine it's useful for CLI (command-line interfaces) such as mysql or psql and most of the command shells...
