Re: Request for inclusion of new xterm-kitty terminfo

[Kovid Goyal]

On Sun, Sep 09, 2018 at 07:31:33PM +0300, Igor Urazov wrote:
> Sorry, sent last message directly, submitting for mailing list this time.
> 
> On Sun, 9 Sep 2018 at 18:47, Igor Urazov <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Thomas, thanks. What kind of licenses are suitable for you? I believe
> > MIT or BSD are okay, right?
> Also there is option to re-license terminfo file under CC, how about this?
> 
> As of "xterm-kitty", there was a reason why this name was picked. At
> this moment ecosystem around terminal emulators accumulated a lot of
> assumptions: if $TERM = "xterm-*", then do something for various
> comparability reasons. Kovid, you have some examples, right? Thomas,
> maybe you have some ideas how to keep this compatibility, if
> xterm-kitty terminfo name is changed.

Sure I can dig up examples if needed, but this is a very common hack
used by many terminal emulators. For example, termite uses xterm-termite
gnome-terminal uses xterm-256color, konsole uses xterm-256color -- the
list goes on and on. The question is why is it a problem for ncurses in
the first place. Does xterm have some kind of most favored terminal
status that gives it permanent ownership over all xterm-* names. And
if so, IMO it is highly unfair. 

> 
> Last question about Su/Tc/setrgbb/setrgbf. I'm not entirely common
> with terminfo syntax and don't know how these capabilities are
> essential. Nor I'm aware how of their history with ncurses. But maybe
> we can omit them from xterm-kitty definition for inclusion in terminfo
> database and run reduced feature set, when they are missing. Still
> this would allow Kovid to distribute full featured terminfo with
> kitty.

They help applications detect the corresponding features. If you remove
them then what happens is that you get bugs like X feature works on my
local computer but not when I SSH in. That is a huge mess that will
create endless confusion and bug reports and that is completely
unnecessary. Again, why does it bother ncurses what terminfo fields are
in a particular terminals definition? I assume ncurses is smart enough
to ignore fields it does not understand, though I may be being overly
optimistic there. I will remind you that you are the one that suggested
I use terminfo as a key value database
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses/2018-02/msg00008.html and
claimed that xterm already does this. Again, why does xterm get to do
this but no other terminal?

-- 
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Dr. Kovid Goyal 
https://www.kovidgoyal.net
https://calibre-ebook.com
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