Cursor Motion

Termcap assumes that the terminal has a cursor, a spot on the screen where a visible mark is displayed, and that most display commands take effect at the position of the cursor. It follows that moving the cursor to a specified location is very important.

There are many terminal capabilities for different cursor motion operations. A terminal description should define as many as possible, but most programs do not need to use most of them. One capability, `cm', moves the cursor to an arbitrary place on the screen; this by itself is sufficient for any application as long as there is no need to support hardcopy terminals or certain old, weak displays that have only relative motion commands. Use of other cursor motion capabilities is an optimization, enabling the program to output fewer characters in some common cases.

If you plan to use the relative cursor motion commands in an application program, you must know what the starting cursor position is. To do this, you must keep track of the cursor position and update the records each time anything is output to the terminal, including graphic characters. In addition, it is necessary to know whether the terminal wraps after writing in the rightmost column. See section Wrapping.

One other motion capability needs special mention: `nw' moves the cursor to the beginning of the following line, perhaps clearing all the starting line after the cursor, or perhaps not clearing at all. This capability is a least common denominator that is probably supported even by terminals that cannot do most other things such as `cm' or `do'. Even hardcopy terminals can support `nw'.

`cm'

String of commands to position the cursor at line l, column c. Both parameters are origin-zero, and are defined relative to the screen, not relative to display memory. All display terminals except a few very obsolete ones support `cm', so it is acceptable for an application program to refuse to operate on terminals lacking `cm'.

`ho'

String of commands to move the cursor to the upper left corner of the screen (this position is called the home position). In terminals where the upper left corner of the screen is not the same as the beginning of display memory, this command must go to the upper left corner of the screen, not the beginning of display memory. Every display terminal supports this capability, and many application programs refuse to operate if the `ho' capability is missing.

`ll'

String of commands to move the cursor to the lower left corner of the screen. On some terminals, moving up from home position does this, but programs should never assume that will work. Just output the `ll' string (if it is provided); if moving to home position and then moving up is the best way to get there, the `ll' command will do that.

`cr'

String of commands to move the cursor to the beginning of the line it is on. If this capability is not specified, many programs assume they can use the ASCII carriage return character for this.

`le'

String of commands to move the cursor left one column. Unless the `bw' flag capability is specified, the effect is undefined if the cursor is at the left margin; do not use this command there. If `bw' is present, this command may be used at the left margin, and it wraps the cursor to the last column of the preceding line.

`nd'

String of commands to move the cursor right one column. The effect is undefined if the cursor is at the right margin; do not use this command there, not even if `am' is present.

`up'

String of commands to move the cursor vertically up one line. The effect of sending this string when on the top line is undefined; programs should never use it that way.

`do'

String of commands to move the cursor vertically down one line. The effect of sending this string when on the bottom line is undefined; programs should never use it that way. Some programs do use `do' to scroll up one line if used at the bottom line, if `sf' is not defined but `sr' is. This is only to compensate for certain old, incorrect terminal descriptions. (In principle this might actually lead to incorrect behavior on other terminals, but that seems to happen rarely if ever.) But the proper solution is that the terminal description should define `sf' as well as `do' if the command is suitable for scrolling. The original idea was that this string would not contain a newline character and therefore could be used without disabling the kernel's usual habit of converting of newline into a carriage-return newline sequence. But many terminal descriptions do use newline in the `do' string, so this is not possible; a program which sends the `do' string must disable output conversion in the kernel (see section Initialization for Use of Termcap).

`bw'

Flag whose presence says that `le' may be used in column zero to move to the last column of the preceding line. If this flag is not present, `le' should not be used in column zero.

`nw'

String of commands to move the cursor to start of next line, possibly clearing rest of line (following the cursor) before moving.

`DO', `UP', `LE', `RI'

Strings of commands to move the cursor n lines down vertically, up vertically, or n columns left or right. Do not attempt to move past any edge of the screen with these commands; the effect of trying that is undefined. Only a few terminal descriptions provide these commands, and most programs do not use them.

`CM'

String of commands to position the cursor at line l, column c, relative to display memory. Both parameters are origin-zero. This capability is present only in terminals where there is a difference between screen-relative and memory-relative addressing, and not even in all such terminals.

`ch'

String of commands to position the cursor at column c in the same line it is on. This is a special case of `cm' in which the vertical position is not changed. The `ch' capability is provided only when it is faster to output than `cm' would be in this special case. Programs should not assume most display terminals have `ch'.

`cv'

String of commands to position the cursor at line l in the same column. This is a special case of `cm' in which the horizontal position is not changed. The `cv' capability is provided only when it is faster to output than `cm' would be in this special case. Programs should not assume most display terminals have `cv'.

`sc'

String of commands to make the terminal save the current cursor position. Only the last saved position can be used. If this capability is present, `rc' should be provided also. Most terminals have neither.

`rc'

String of commands to make the terminal restore the last saved cursor position. If this capability is present, `sc' should be provided also. Most terminals have neither.

`ff'

String of commands to advance to the next page, for a hardcopy terminal.

`ta'

String of commands to move the cursor right to the next hardware tab stop column. Missing if the terminal does not have any kind of hardware tabs. Do not send this command if the kernel's terminal modes say that the kernel is expanding tabs into spaces.

`bt'

String of commands to move the cursor left to the previous hardware tab stop column. Missing if the terminal has no such ability; many terminals do not. Do not send this command if the kernel's terminal modes say that the kernel is expanding tabs into spaces.

The following obsolete capabilities should be included in terminal descriptions when appropriate, but should not be looked at by new programs.

`nc'

Flag whose presence means the terminal does not support the ASCII carriage return character as `cr'. This flag is needed because old programs assume, when the `cr' capability is missing, that ASCII carriage return can be used for the purpose. We use `nc' to tell the old programs that carriage return may not be used. New programs should not assume any default for `cr', so they need not look at `nc'. However, descriptions should contain `nc' whenever they do not contain `cr'.

`xt'

Flag whose presence means that the ASCII tab character may not be used for cursor motion. This flag exists because old programs assume, when the `ta' capability is missing, that ASCII tab can be used for the purpose. We use `xt' to tell the old programs not to use tab. New programs should not assume any default for `ta', so they need not look at `xt' in connection with cursor motion. Note that `xt' also has implications for standout mode (see section Standout and Appearance Modes). It is obsolete in regard to cursor motion but not in regard to standout. In fact, `xt' means that the terminal is a Teleray 1061.

`bc'

Very obsolete alternative name for the `le' capability.

`bs'

Flag whose presence means that the ASCII character backspace may be used to move the cursor left. Obsolete; look at `le' instead.

`nl'

Obsolete capability which is a string that can either be used to move the cursor down or to scroll. The same string must scroll when used on the bottom line and move the cursor when used on any other line. New programs should use `do' or `sf', and ignore `nl'. If there is no `nl' capability, some old programs assume they can use the newline character for this purpose. These programs follow a bad practice, but because they exist, it is still desirable to define the `nl' capability in a terminal description if the best way to move down is not a newline.

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