Re: Which string capabilities need script interpreation?

[Thomas Dickey]

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 04:40:18PM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
> I'm trying to figure which string capabilities in terminfo files need
> to run through the script interpreter during output.  Is this
> information available somewhere?  Type information for the script
> parameters would also be nice.

When you say "script", I'm thinking of the command-line program
by that name.  It's not an interpreter -- it simply records the
characters sent to the terminal.

In terminfo, you have literal strings with some features
added (parameter-substitution, simple expressions and padding).
The tparm function takes those strings along with the actual parameters,
and generates a string that (still containing padding)
can be sent to the terminal using tputs.

If the capability string has no padding (e.g., TERM=xterm),
then tputs has not much to do except copy the string to the terminal.
 
> What about the string capabilities that need to be processed for $<…>
> delays?  Are those marked with P in the terminfo manual page?

yes - the manual page says this:

       (P)    indicates that padding may be specified

       (P*)   indicates that padding may vary in proportion to the  number  of
              lines affected

and in summarizing the capabilities, those markers are used.
That's only noting an assumption -- different terminals may have
padding (generally the hardware terminals -- but even emulators
may use padding for the "flash" capability).

> (Not sure if this is strictly an ncurses question, but I don't know
> where else to ask.)
> 

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
https://invisible-island.net
ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net

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