description: The Termcap Library is the documentation for Termcap, a library and database that enables programs to use display terminals in a terminal-independent manner. It originated in Berkeley Unix. The termcap database describes the capabilities of hundreds of different display terminals in great detail. Some examples of the information recorded for a terminal could include how many columns wide it is, what string to send to move the cursor to an arbitrary position (including how to encode the row and column numbers), how to scroll the screen up one or several lines, and how much padding is needed for such a scrolling operation. The termcap library is provided for easy access this database in programs that want to do terminal-independent character-based display output. This manual describes the GNU version of the termcap library, which has some extensions over the Unix version. All the extensions are identified as such, so this manual also tells you how to use the Unix termcap. The GNU version of the termcap library is available free as source code. This book is a printed version of the GNU termcap documentation, available online from the Free Software Foundation.
language: English
title: The termcap manual: The termcap library and data base
titlecomplete: The termcap manual: The termcap library and data base
publisher: Free Software Foundation