Termcap in Ubuntu

[Tommy Trussell]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 5:27 PM, J Bickhard <jbickhard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm using Ubuntu 8.10 and want to install the termcap for the TRS-80 Model
> 100 (please don't laugh). However, I looked, and it seems as though Ubuntu
> doesn't have an /etc/termcap file. :-(
>
> Can someone explain in noob terms how to install a termcap in Ubuntu, and
> how to use it? You can find the termcap file at
> http://zork.net/~octal/mod100.html if you are interested.
> Jake, Editor of Micro 100 Magazine

Howdy! It's been awhile since I had my hands on a TRS-80 Model 100...
and it's been almost as long since I messed with a termcap file... but
a few Google searches indicate that Debian/Ubuntu uses ncurses instead
of termcap.

For making old software work, most of the solutions seem to involve
installing the package ncurses5-dev (and presumably some others). Here
is an OLD forum post but I point to it because it has details about
making software compile when it's looking for a termcap library.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=241707

I see that the ncurses package includes a utility called captoinfo
that lets you convert termcap files into the (newer?) terminfo format.
Once the packages are installed reading the man pages should help a
lot.