1This is the GNU termcap library -- a library of C functions that 2enable programs to send control strings to terminals in a way 3independent of the terminal type. The GNU termcap library does not 4place an arbitrary limit on the size of termcap entries, unlike most 5other termcap libraries. 6 7Most of this package is also distributed with GNU Emacs, but it is 8available in this separate distribution to make it easier to install 9as -ltermcap. However, use of termcap is discouraged. Termcap is 10being phased out in favor of the terminfo-based ncurses library, which 11contains an emulation of the termcap library routines in addition to 12an excellent curses implementation. ncurses is available from the 13usual GNU archive sites. 14 15See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions. 16Additionally: 17 18This package contains termcap.src, the latest official termcap data 19file. By default, it is not installed. The current version contains 20some entries that are more than 1023 bytes long, which is the largest 21value that is safe to use with the many historical applications that 22only allocate a 1024 byte termcap buffer (telnet, for example). If 23you make sure that all of your programs allocate buffers of at least 242500 bytes, or let the termcap library do it by passing a NULL 25pointer, then it is safe to install the new termcap file, as described 26below. 27 28You can give configure two special options: 29 --enable-install-termcap install the termcap data file 30 --with-termcap=FILE use data file FILE instead of /etc/termcap 31 32Please report any bugs in this library to bug-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu. 33You can check which version of the library you have by using the RCS 34`ident' command on libtermcap.a. 35