> Are there any linux distros for any platform that aren't shipping terminfo?
Ah, I was referring to higher-level languages such as Ruby here (I have a lot of scripts where I use it a shell script replacement) rather than C, where you can just download a compiled version and use it without any fuss. Ruby moved its curses interface out of the standard library a long time ago, so now you have to add it to your gems list.
> If you're pretty printing text for a human to read then I don't think the couple extra ms it will take to spawn a handful of tput processes is going to be an actual performance concern.
For scripts, I agree — I used to use tput, and only stopped because I'd eventually seen the ANSI escape codes enough time to just memorise them. But I find that if your program needs to use enough colours (my software has been called "overly colourful" before), the time it takes to run a tput once for every bold and normal variant of all eight colours quickly makes it seem like your program is running on the JVM, even if I cache the output. I appreciate that not all software needs every terminal style available to it, but it seems to me that the best interface should be able to scale to many styles, not just a few.
> I was going to refute the any language comment with libraries based on terminfo, but all the ones I ran across in 30 seconds just hard code the ANSI escape sequences.
This doesn't surprise me! I used to be concerned with the growing number of comments and guides on the internet that say things like "this is how you do bold in a terminal" as though it applies to all terminals, so I asked a question on Stack Exchange a while ago:
I was hoping to find an answer from someone like yourself, who regularly works with non-ANSI terminals and was becoming increasingly annoyed at the proliferation of standards-shirking shell scripts... but I only got comments saying I was doing it wrong, as though I was the only one who didn't get the memo. You're the only obscure terminal user I've ever talked to in the wild, congratulations.
Anyway, I agree that we're stuck in this situation, and even though I am taking the easy way out, I still find that a shame.
Ah, I was referring to higher-level languages such as Ruby here (I have a lot of scripts where I use it a shell script replacement) rather than C, where you can just download a compiled version and use it without any fuss. Ruby moved its curses interface out of the standard library a long time ago, so now you have to add it to your gems list.
> If you're pretty printing text for a human to read then I don't think the couple extra ms it will take to spawn a handful of tput processes is going to be an actual performance concern.
For scripts, I agree — I used to use tput, and only stopped because I'd eventually seen the ANSI escape codes enough time to just memorise them. But I find that if your program needs to use enough colours (my software has been called "overly colourful" before), the time it takes to run a tput once for every bold and normal variant of all eight colours quickly makes it seem like your program is running on the JVM, even if I cache the output. I appreciate that not all software needs every terminal style available to it, but it seems to me that the best interface should be able to scale to many styles, not just a few.
> I was going to refute the any language comment with libraries based on terminfo, but all the ones I ran across in 30 seconds just hard code the ANSI escape sequences.
This doesn't surprise me! I used to be concerned with the growing number of comments and guides on the internet that say things like "this is how you do bold in a terminal" as though it applies to all terminals, so I asked a question on Stack Exchange a while ago:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/548158/in-2019-is-i...
I was hoping to find an answer from someone like yourself, who regularly works with non-ANSI terminals and was becoming increasingly annoyed at the proliferation of standards-shirking shell scripts... but I only got comments saying I was doing it wrong, as though I was the only one who didn't get the memo. You're the only obscure terminal user I've ever talked to in the wild, congratulations.
Anyway, I agree that we're stuck in this situation, and even though I am taking the easy way out, I still find that a shame.