I recently found myself wanting to use a TERM type that doesn't exist in the
netbsd termcap file, but does exist in ncurses terminfo.  After installing
the ncurses package from pkgsrc (which installs /usr/pkg/share/terminfo) and
naiively setting TERM I found a couple of things:

- the netbsd pkgsrc patches prevent ncurses from installing a tput(1) which
understands terminfo  (Why?)

- netbsd libcurses seems totally ignorant of terminfo, so vi, less, etc.
don't like me anymore

Personally, I don't care to take sides in the termcap vs. terminfo debate.
I just want to be able to use a terminal description which actually matches
my terminal program.  (For the record, I'm trying to use one of the "nsterm"
variants.)

What's the best way to deal with this?  I've currently got a ~/.termcap file
containing selected entries created from the ncurses terminfo.src using
infotocap.  This mostly works, but seems pretty cumbersome.  It also doesn't
work for some of the variants, including "nsterm-c-s-acs",the one I'd prefer
to use.  

(By "doesn't work", I mean that programs which use termcap give either
"tgetent failure: No such file or directory", fail to initialize the
terminal (possibly the same failure with a different error message), or dump
core.)

What's the netbsd policy on termcap updates and/or terminfo support?  Should
the netbsd termcap file be brought up to date?  Do the historical length
limits on termcap entries apply to the netbsd implementation?

Thanks,
-- monroe
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Monroe Williams                                  monroe@criticalpath.com