lfs-book/appendixa/ncurses-desc.xml

<sect2>
<title>Contents</title>

<para>The Ncurses package contains the ncurses, panel, menu and form
libraries. It also contains the clear, infocmp, tic, toe, tput and tset
programs.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2><title>Description</title>

<sect3><title>The libraries</title>
<para>The libraries that make up the Ncurses library are used to display text
(often in a fancy way) on the screen. An example where ncurses is used
is in the kernel's <quote>make menuconfig</quote> process. The libraries
contain routines to create panels, menu's, form and general text display
routines.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>clear</title>
<para>The clear program clears the screen if this is possible.  It looks in
the environment for the terminal type and then in the terminfo database
to figure out how to clear the screen.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>infocmp</title>
<para>The infocmp program can be used to compare a binary terminfo entry with
other terminfo entries, rewrite a terminfo description to 
take advantage of the use=  terminfo field, or print  out  a  
terminfo  description  from the binary file (term) in a variety of 
formats (the opposite of what tic does).</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>tic</title>
<para>Tic is the terminfo entry-description compiler. The program translates a
terminfo file from source format into the binary format for use with the
ncurses library routines. Terminfo files contain information about the
capabilities of a terminal.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>toe</title>
<para>The toe program lists all available terminal types by primary name with
descriptions.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>tput</title>
<para>The tput program uses the terminfo database to make the values of
terminal-dependent capabilities and  information available to the shell,
to initialize or reset the terminal, or return the long name of the
requested terminal type.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>tset</title>
<para>The Tset program initializes terminals so they can be used, but it's not
widely used anymore. It's provided for 4.4BSD compatibility.</para></sect3>

</sect2>