termcap stands for "terminal capability," and it refers to the text file /etc/termcap and a set of routines to read this file. The termcap scheme was developed at Berkeley to support the vi editor. The termcap file contains descriptions of various terminals: what features the terminal supports (how many lines and rows, whether the terminal support backspace, etc.) and how to make the terminal perform certain operations (clear the screen, move the cursor to a given location, etc.). Taking this information out of the compiled program and placing it into a text file that can easily be edited allows the vi editor to run on many different terminals.
As more and more terminals were added to the data file, it took longer to scan the file, looking for a specific terminal. The data file also used two-character names to identify the various terminal attributes. These deficiencies led to development of the terminfo scheme and its associated curses library. The terminal descriptions in terminfo are basically compiled versions of a textual description and can be located faster at runtime. terminfo appeared with SVR2 and has been in all System V releases since then.
Functions are provided by curses to set raw mode, set cbreak mode, turn echo on and off, and the like. But the curses library is designed for character-based dumb terminals, which have mostly been replaced by pixel-based graphics terminals today.
Credit: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~eweiss/222_book/222_book/**********/ch18lev1sec13.html
