Copyright (c) Amir Hermelin 1999
This software may be freely used and distributed provided:
1) No charge is made for this software.
2) This and the following copyright statements are retained.
3) User accepts that this software is provided "AS IS"
with NO WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER, including but not limited to
merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-
infringement; and accepts SOLE LIABILITY for any consequences
whatsoever arising directly or indirectly from any use or
misuse of this software or related documentation.
4) User agrees that the author is under no obligation to
maintain, update, modify, support or enhance this software
or related documentation.



WHO:	Amir Hermelin

WHAT:   Interface to the terminal capabilities on UNIX systems.

WHERE:  http://www.neosoft.com/tcl/ (somewhere in the devel area)

REQUIREMENTS:
	Tcl 8.0 or higher, running on UNIX
	Tested through Tcl 8.0

Tputs is a filter package that allows users to enhance their output by using terminal capabilities. Terminal capabilities are features of the UNIX terminal, that allow: inquiries, such as number of columns; enhancing output, such as bold or underline; saving or changing the cursor position; clearing the screen, deleting lines, etc. This is done through outputing escape codes to the terminal, obtained via the terminal capability database. For more information, use the unix command "man termcap". Tputs will only work on UNIX systems; other operating systems do not have this specific termcap database.



ADDITIONAL HELP:
	See file README.html for detailed help on functions included in the package.

EXAMPLE SCRIPTS:

	See demo.tcl script. You will have to change the first line, currently loading the package through the "package require" command, to fit your installation type. See the "INSTALLATION" section in this README for more help on this. Functions included in the script are:

	tputs_drawBorder - draws a border around the edgs of the screen.
	tputs_showText   - shows some examples of marked text output.
	tputs_showTime   - demonstrates an updated clock at the upper-right corner of the screen.


INSTALLATION:

1) Unzip and untar to a directory.
2) Type "./configure" to create a makefile. Use the "--with-tcl=DIR" option if you know the location of the TCL directory. Otherwise, configure will attempt to automatically locate it, assuming you TCL version is 8.0. If different, use the "--with-tclversion=VER", where VER is your x.y TCL version.
- Type "make" to compile
- Type "make install" to copy the package to a default TCL package directory. Note: you can only use this function with superuser permissions.
3) To load the package into your TCL interpreter:
3.a) If "make install" succeeded, all you need to do is to issue the command "package require tputs".
3.b) If the package is not located in your default TCL package directory, use the command "load <fullpath>/libtputs[info sharedlibextension]"
3.c) If you still want to use the package method, prepend the command "lappend auto_path <fullpath>". Then using the "package require" command would work correctly.
Note: In both 3.b and 3.c, <fullpath> designates the path to the directory in which you compiled the library.


CONTACT: Amir Hermelin, rimaher@hotmail.com

Good luck, and happy tcl'ing.

