[net.sources] Public Domain Curses/Terminfo problems

Jeff Dean <jeff@aids-unix> (01/10/85)

Well, it looks like lots of us are having problems with
the terminfo/curses distribution.  There seem to be a
bunch of problems with mille just in terms of keeping
track of things on the screen.  I found that with the
terminfo version, the screen needs to be restored fairly
often; I didn't have the same problem with the termcap
version.

As far as slowness goes, make sure you are using
libncurses and not libdcurses.  The latter writes out
thousands of lines of debugging information, and is so
verrbose to be almost useless.

As another test of terminfo curses, I tested it with a
progam called "plane" that appeared on this list not too
long ago.  The program is incredibly simply, yet
terminfo curses fails to work properly with it.

Since we're already running terminfo with some other software,
I'm pretty certain the problem is with the curses part, and
not with the terminfo part (or with our terminal descriptions).

It's too bad so many of us went through all that trouble
to collect and compile all that software, only to discover
that it is useless.