From owner-freebsd-current Mon Apr 8 16:28:52 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id QAA11982 for current-outgoing; Mon, 8 Apr 1996 16:28:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id QAA11976 for ; Mon, 8 Apr 1996 16:28:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id QAA03414; Mon, 8 Apr 1996 16:20:48 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199604082320.QAA03414@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: terminfo-less ncurses To: scrappy@ki.net (Marc G. Fournier) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 16:20:47 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, ache@astral.msk.su, esr@locke.ccil.org, current@FreeBSD.org, ncurses-list@netcom.com In-Reply-To: from "Marc G. Fournier" at Apr 8, 96 06:57:46 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > If you add attribute "foo", since the on disk data is a binary > > data file contatining a structure, all on-disk data files must be > > changes and all statically linked programs must be relinked to > > get the new sizof(struct) and element layout. > > > Now, *this* argument makes sense. > > I take it that in a termcap file, if you add attribute "foo" to one > entry, you don't have to do so to all the entries? Or is it just the fact > that its in one file instead of many? You are not required to add any particular attribute to any particular entry. This includes new attributes. The file format is not changed; since the attributes are interpretively parsed from the file, the name is less important than the format. The difference is that I can add as many attributes as I want without affecting any binary files (well, lookups are now done using an indexed database, but the principle is the same). There is some initial start-up overhead to parse the entries, which is insignificant compared to the overhead needed to run most programs. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.