- This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 and
- 5.1; very few applications will require recompilation, depending on
- the platform. These are the highlights from the change-log since
- ncurses 5.1 release.
-
- Interface changes:
- * change type of ospeed variable back to short to match its use in
- legacy applications. It was altered after ncurses 4.2 to speed_t
- to repair a type mismatch which was introduced after 1.9.4 in
- 1995. The principal users of termcap continued to use short, which
- is not the same size.
- NOTE: A few applications will have to be recompiled (about 1% of
- the programs in a typical Linux distribution, 10% of the programs
- that use ncurses). These are easy to identify with nm or strings.
- * remove a private function _nc_can_clear_with(), which was built
- with the configure --enable-expanded option but not used.
- * add several private functions (prefixed with "_nc_") for tracing
- chtype values in the debug library, and for better access and
- buffer limit checking.
-
- New features and improvements:
- * rewrote tgoto() to make it better support existing termcap
- applications which use hardcoded strings rather than obtain all of
- their information from the termcap file. If the string does not
- appear to be a terminfo string (i.e., does not refer to a "%p"
- parameter, or terminfo-style padding), and termcap support is
- configured, tgoto() will interpret it as termcap. Otherwise, as
- before, it will use tparm().
- * to ensure that the tgoto() changes work properly, added checks to
- tic which report capabilities that do not reference the expected
- number of parameters.
- * new configure script options:
- + option --disable-root-environ adds runtime checks which tell
- ncurses to disregard $TERMINFO and similar environment
- variables if the current user is root, or running
- setuid/setgid.
- + option --disable-assumed-color allows you to use the pre-5.1
- convention of default colors used for color-pair 0 to be
- configured (see assume_default_colors()).
- + implement configure script options that transform installed
- program names, e.g., --program-prefix, including the manpage
- names and cross references.
- + option --with-database allows you to specify a different
- terminfo source-file to install. On OS/2 EMX, the default is
- misc/emx.src, otherwise misc/terminfo.src
- + option --with-default-terminfo-dir allows you to specify the
- default terminfo database directory.
- + option --with-libtool allows you to build with libtool.
- NOTE: libtool uses a different notation for numbering shared
- library versions from the existing ncurses configuration.
- + option --with-manpage-tbl causes the manpages to be
- preprocessed by tbl(1) prior to installation,
- + option --without-curses-h causes the installation process to
- install curses.h as ncurses.h and make appropriate changes to
- headers and manpages.
- * modified configure script options:
- + change symbol used by the --install-prefix configure option
- from INSTALL_PREFIX to DESTDIR (the latter has become common
- usage although the name is misleading).
- + modify ld -rpath options (e.g., Linux, and Solaris) to use an
- absolute pathname for the build tree's lib directory,
- avoiding confusion with directories relative to the current
- one with the installed programs.
- + modified misc/run_tic.in to use tic -o, to eliminate
- dependency on $TERMINFO variable for installs.
- * terminfo database:
- + updated xterm terminfo entries to match XFree86 xterm patch
- #146.
- + added amiga-vnc, Matrix Orbital, and QNX qansi to
- misc/terminfo.src.
- + added os2 entry to misc/emx.src.
- + add S0 and E0 extensions to screen's terminfo entry since
- otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
- to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older versions of
- ncurses.
- * improvements to program usability:
- + modify programs to use curses_version() string to report the
- version of ncurses with which they are compiled rather than
- the NCURSES_VERSION string. The function returns the patch
- level in addition to the major and minor version numbers.
- + modify tput program so it can be renamed or invoked via a
- link as 'reset' or 'init', producing the same effect as
- tput reset or tput init.
- + add error checking to infocmp's -v and -m options to ensure
- that the option value is indeed a number.
- * improved performance:
- + replace a lookup table in lib_vidattr.c used to decode
- no_color_video with a logic expression which is faster.
-
- Major bug fixes:
- * correct manlinks.sed script introduced in ncurses 5.1 to avoid
- using ERE "\+", which is not understood by standard versions of
- sed. This happens to work with GNU sed, but is not portable, and
- was the initial motivation for this release.
- * remove "hpux10.*" case from CF_SHARED_OPTS configure script macro.
- This differed from the "hpux*" case by using reversed symbolic
- links, which made the 5.1 version not match the configuration of
- 5.0 shared libraries.
- * guard against corrupt terminfo data:
- + modify tparm() to disallow arithmetic on strings, analyze the
- varargs list to read strings as strings and numbers as
- numbers.
- + modify tparm()'s internal function spop() to treat a null
- pointer as an empty string.
- + modify parse_format() in lib_tparm.c to ignore precision if
- it is longer than 10000.
- + rewrote limit checks in lib_mvcur.c using new functions
- _nc_safe_strcat(), etc. Made other related changes to check
- lengths used for strcat() and strcpy().
- * corrections to screen optimization:
- + added special case in lib_vidattr.c to reset underline and
- standout for devices that have no sgr0 defined.
- + change handling of non_dest_scroll_region in tty_update.c to
- clear text after it is shifted in rather than before shifting
- out. Also correct row computation.
- + modify rs2 capability in xterm-r6 and similar entries where
- cursor save/restore bracketed the sequence for resetting
- video attributes. The cursor restore would undo that.
- * UTF-8 support:
- + when checking LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment
- variables for UTF-8 locale, ignore those which are set to an
- empty value, as per SUSV2.
- + encode 0xFFFD in UTF-8 with 3 bytes, not 2.
- + modify _nc_utf8_outch() to avoid sign-extension when checking
- for out-of-range value.
- * other library fixes:
- + added checks for an empty $HOME environment variable, to
- avoid retrieving terminfo descriptions from ./.terminfo .
- + change functions _nc_parse_entry() and postprocess_termcap()
- to avoid using strtok(), because it is non-reentrant.
- + initialize fds[] array to 0's in _nc_timed_wait(); apparently
- poll() only sets the revents members of that array when there
- is activity corresponding to the related file.
- + add a check for null pointer in Make_Enum_Type().
- + fix a heap problem with the c++ binding.
- + correct missing includes for <string.h> in several places,
- including the C++ binding. This is not noted by gcc unless we
- use the -fno-builtin option.
- * several fixes for tic:
- + add a check for empty buffers returned by fgets() in
- comp_scan.c next_char() function, in case tic is run on a
- non-text file (fixes a core dump).
- + modify tic to verify that its inputs are really files, in
- case someone tries to read a directory (or /dev/zero).
- + correct an uninitialized parameter to open_tempfile() in
- tic.c which made "tic -I" give an ambiguous error message
- about tmpnam.
- + correct logic in adjust_cancels(), which did not check both
- alternatives when reclassifying an extended name between
- boolean, number and string, causing an infinite loop in tic.
- * using new checks in tic for parameter counts in capability
- strings, found/fixed several errors both in the terminfo database
- and in the include/Caps file.
- + modified several terminfo capability strings, including the
- definitions for setaf, setab, in include/Caps to indicate
- that the entries are parameterized. This information is used
- to tell which strings are translated when converting to
- termcap. This fixes a problem where the generated termcap
- would contain a spurious "%p1" for the terminfo "%p1%d".
- + correct parameter counts in include/Caps for dclk as well as
- some printer-specific capabilities: csnm, defc, scs, scsd,
- smgtp, smglp.
- * various fixes for install scripts used to support configure
- --srcdir and --with-install-prefix.
- * correct several mismatches between manpage filename and ".TH"
- directives, renaming dft_fgbg.3x to default_colors.3x and
- menu_attribs.3x to menu_attributes.3x.
-
- Portability:
- * configure script:
- + newer config.guess, config.sub, including changes to support
- OS/2 EMX. The configure script for OS/2 EMX still relies on a
- patch since there is no (working) support for that platform
- in the main autoconf distribution.
- + make configure script checks on variables $GCC and $GXX
- consistently compare against 'yes' rather than test if they
- are nonnull, since either may be set to the corresponding
- name of the C or C++ compiler.
- + change configure script to use AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM rather
- than AC_CANONICAL_HOST, which means that configure --target
- will set a default program-prefix.
- + modify the check for big-core to force a couple of memory
- accesses, which may work as needed for older/less-capable
- machines (if not, there's still the explicit configure
- option).
- + modify configure test for tcgetattr() to allow for old
- implementations, e.g., on BeOS, which only defined it as a
- macro.
- + add configure check for filesystems (such as OS/2 EMX) which
- do not distinguish between upper/lowercase filenames, use
- this to fix tags rules in makefiles.
- + add MKncurses_def.sh to generate fallback definitions for
- ncurses_cfg.h, to quiet gcc -Wundef warnings, modified
- ifdef's in code to consistently use "#if" rather than
- "#ifdef".
- + change most remaining unquoted parameters of test in
- configure script to use quotes, for instance fixing a problem
- in the --disable-database option.
- + modify scripts so that "make install.data" works on OS/2 EMX.
- + modify scripts and makefiles so the Ada95 directory builds on
- OS/2 EMX.
- * library:
- + replaced case-statement in _nc_tracebits() for CSIZE with a
- table to simplify working around implementations that define
- random combinations of the related macros to zero.
- + improved OS/2 mouse support by retrying as a 2-button mouse
- if code fails to set up a 3-button mouse.
- + added private entrypoint _nc_basename(), used to consolidate
- related code in progs, as well as accommodating OS/2 EMX
- pathnames.
- + alter definition of NCURSES_CONST to make it non-empty.
- + redefine 'TEXT' in menu.h for AMIGA, since it is reported to
- have an (unspecified) symbol conflict.
- * programs:
- + modified progs/tset.c and tack/sysdep.c to build with sgttyb
- interface if neither termio or termios is available. Tested
- this with FreeBSD 2.1.5 (which does have termios - but the
- sgttyb does work).
projects / ncurses.git / blobdiff