3.11.2 INIT

TTY.INIT() ! => 0

Initialize the TTY control structures. This routine must be called before any other procedures of this class can be used. It performs the following steps (depending on the used operating system, some of these steps may be skipped):

• Open the controlling TTY (/dev/tty) for reading and writing.
• Determine the user's terminal type (by evaluating the $TERM environment variable).
• Check the terminal's color capability. Assume color, if either 1) the terminal's name contains the substring "color" or 2) the terminal's name begins with the prefix "xterm".
• Check the $ANSICOLOR variable which may be set to YES or NO to override the color capability detection.
• Extract some required properties, control strings, and keycodes from the termcap(5) database.

INIT may fail for any of the following reasons:

• $TERM is not defined
• The value of $TERM is not a known TTY type
• The terminal type does not define one or more out of the following termcap variables: {co,li,ce,cl,cm,cs,sf,sr,se,so}

In any of the above cases, an appropriate message will be printed and the calling program will be terminated.

On Plan 9 systems, this is basically a null operation. A VT102 compatible terminal is assumed. TTYCtl programs must be run under the vt(1) emulator. 24x80 characters and raw mode must be selected manually using the button-3 menu of vt(1).

See also: MODE