installation assistance request (AIX 4.3)

[Dave Gomboc]

I hvae been advised that the "bug-report" list is also appropriate for
installation request help, so here goes...

I've downloaded and compiled ncurses 5.2 (using gcc 2.95.2).  After setting
the environment variable TERMINFO to /usr/share/lib/terminfo (as directed in
the FAQ), I was able to run some of the programs in the test subdirectory.
(Previous to setting the variable, I'd get an "error opening terminal ..."
message.)  However, the test programs indicate that my configuration isn't
correct.

Running "ncurses" (in test) gives a menu, from which I can choose several
options.  Most of them will produce garble:

^lqkxjmwuvtnClqkxjmwuvtn lqkxjmwuvtn=lqkxjmwuvtn
lqkxjmwuvtnclqkxjmwuvtnrlqkxjmw
uvtnelqkxjmwuvtnalqkxjmwuvtntlqkxjmwuvtnelqkxjmwuvtn
lqkxjmwuvtnwlqkxjmwuvtnilqk
xjmwuvtnnlqkxjmwuvtndlqkxjmwuvtnolqkxjmwuvtnwlqkxjmwuvtn,lqkxjmwuvtn
lqkxjmwuvtn

is a typical sample.  The character attribute test (choice b) actually
causes a segmentation fault!

I'm using VT100 with a program called "Tera Term", which claims to even
support VT320, so presumably its VT100 implementation is adequate.  (I have
also set my TERM variable to VT100.)

I think the step that I may be missing is to "compile" the terminfo source
into its own binary.  It wasn't exactly clear to me how to go about this,
given that I have yet to run "make install", for fear of clobbering the
system's terminfo data.  (I'd prefer not to overwrite the default curses
library and terminfo information -- and am satisfied to require people to
compile with an extra include switch to link against ncurses instead of
curses.)  I suppose that it might be possible to use IBM's own "tic" to do
this, but that didn't make a lot of sense to me.  At this point I could
experiment a bit more, but I figured that instead of inviting myself to do
something stupid I would ask for guidance. ;)  What should I do from here?

Thanks for any help you can provide,
Dave