termscapable

Terms capable, or termscapable, is an adjective used to describe software or hardware that can interpret and apply terminal capability information from a terminal capability database. Historically, termscapable systems rely on the termcap format, which encodes the capabilities of different terminal types—such as cursor movement, screen clearing, bold or color support—in a compact data file. Programs that are termscapable use this data to adapt their output to the connected terminal.

In practice, termscapable software consults a terminal database via a library such as libtermcap. If a system uses the newer terminfo system, the termcap terminology is sometimes extended to describe compatibility rather than strict implementation, and termcap-enabled or terminfo-enabled phrasing may be used. The key idea is that the program is aware of terminal characteristics and can select appropriate control sequences rather than assuming a single fixed interface.

The concept is now more often referred to in terms of termcap-enabled, termcap-compatible, or terminfo-enabled, reflecting the shift from termcap to terminfo in many Unix-like environments. While the exact terminology varies, the underlying goal remains: to ensure that text-based interfaces render correctly across a range of terminals by querying and honoring terminal capabilities.

See also: termcap, terminfo, ncurses, libtermcap.