TERMCAP / TERMINFO difference?

[John Ruckstuhl]

Please give me a history lesson --

Information in the TERMCAP database seems to be almost duplicated by
information in the TERMINFO database.  Why?  

Is it faster to access TERMINFO-info than TERMCAP-info?

Does typical software (eg, "vi") know to look first at one, then, if
unsuccessful, look at the other database?
How is TERMCAP-info kept synchronized with $TERMINFO-info?  Does it
depend only on the diligence of the system administrator?

A "strings" on /usr/ucb/vi seemed to indicate it used a search path 
TERMINFO, and maybe doesn't even look to TERMCAP.

I am using SunOS 4.1 on SPARCstations

Thank you for your comments,
ruck.
--
John R Ruckstuhl, Jr
University of Florida		ruck at cis.ufl.edu, uflorida!ruck