- Announcing ncurses 4.1
-
- The ncurses (new curses) library is a freeware emulation of System V
- Release 4.0 curses. It uses terminfo format, supports pads and color
- and multiple highlights and forms characters and function-key mapping,
- and has all the other SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD curses.
-
+ Announcing ncurses 5.2
+
+ The ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation of
+ curses in System V Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo format,
+ supports pads and color and multiple highlights and forms characters
+ and function-key mapping, and has all the other SYSV-curses
+ enhancements over BSD curses.
+
In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared that he
considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and is encouraging the keepers of
Unix releases such as BSD/OS, freeBSD and netBSD to switch over to
ncurses.
-
- The ncurses code was developed under Linux. It should port easily to
- any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!
-
+
+ The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It should port easily
+ to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported to OS/2
+ Warp!
+
The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including
a terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), clear(1),
tput(1), tset(1), and a termcap conversion tool captoinfo(1). Full
manual pages are provided for the library and tools.
-
- The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at:
- [1]ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses. and
- [2]ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/zm/zmbenhal/ncurses. It is also carried on
- the GNU distribution site at [3]ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu.
-
- Features of ncurses
-
- The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 curses:
-
+
+ The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at the GNU
+ distribution site [1]ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses.
+ It is also available at [2]ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses.
+
+ Release Notes
+
+ 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).
+
+ Features of Ncurses
+
+ The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4)
+ curses:
* All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are
documented).
* Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard mapping,
color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and automatic
recognition of keypad and function keys.
- * An emulation of the System V Release 4 panels library, supporting
- a stack of windows with backing store, is included.
- * An emulation of the System V Release 4 menus library, supporting a
- uniform but flexible interface for menu programming, is included.
- * An emulation of the System V Release 4 form library, supporting
- data collection through on-screen forms, is included.
+ * An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting a stack of
+ windows with backing store, is included.
+ * An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting a uniform but
+ flexible interface for menu programming, is included.
+ * An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting data collection
+ through on-screen forms, is included.
* Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1)
implementation are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format
SVr4 curses uses.
* The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo entries
for use with less capable curses/terminfo versions such as the
HP/UX and AIX ports.
-
+
The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over SVr4:
-
* The API is 8-bit clean and base-level conformant with the X/OPEN
- curses specification, XSI Curses (that is, it implements all BASE
+ curses specification, XSI curses (that is, it implements all BASE
level features, but not all EXTENDED features). Most
EXTENDED-level features not directly concerned with wide-character
support are implemented, including many function calls not
supported under SVr4 curses (but portability of all calls is
documented so you can use the SVr4 subset only).
- * Unlike SVr4 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost
+ * Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost
corner of the screen if your terminal has an insert-character
capability.
- * (PC-clone boxes only) Support for access to the IBM PC ROM
- characters 0-32 through the highlight A_ALTCHARSET.
- * Support for mouse event reporting under xterm.
+ * Ada95 and C++ bindings.
+ * Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and OS/2
+ console windows.
+ * Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm package.
* The function wresize() allows you to resize windows, preserving
their data.
+ * The function use_default_colors() allows you to use the terminal's
+ default colors for the default color pair, achieving the effect of
+ transparent colors.
+ * The functions keyok() and define_key() allow you to better control
+ the use of function keys, e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE,
+ or by defining more than one control sequence to map to a given
+ key code.
+ * Support for 16-color terminals, such as aixterm and XFree86 xterm.
* Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now features a
cursor-local-movement computation more efficient than either BSD's
or System V's.
* An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document
provides a narrative introduction to the curses programming
interface.
-
+
State of the Package
-
+
Numerous bugs present in earlier versions have been fixed; the library
is far more reliable than it used to be. Bounds checking in many
`dangerous' entry points has been improved. The code is now type-safe
according to gcc -Wall. The library has been checked for malloc leaks
and arena corruption by the Purify memory-allocation tester.
-
+
The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of applications
- including:
-
+ including (versions starting with those noted):
+
+ cdk
+ Curses Development Kit
+ [3]http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html
+ [4]http://dickey.his.com/cdk.
+
ded
- directory-editor [4]ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ded.
-
+ directory-editor
+ [5]http://dickey.his.com/ded.
+
dialog
the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and the
- basis for similar applications on Linux.
-
- lynx-2.7
+ basis for similar applications on GNU/Linux.
+ [6]http://dickey.his.com/dialog.
+
+ lynx
the character-screen WWW browser
-
- ncftp 2.0
+ [7]http://lynx.isc.org/release.
+
+ Midnight Commander 4.1
+ file manager
+ [8]www.gnome.org/mc/.
+
+ mutt
+ mail utility
+ [9]http://www.mutt.org.
+
+ ncftp
file-transfer utility
-
+ [10]http://www.ncftp.com.
+
nvi
New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7 and
later.
-
+ [11]http://www.bostic.com/vi/.
+
+ tin
+ newsreader, supporting color, MIME
+ [12]http://www.tin.org.
+
taper
tape archive utility
-
+ [13]http://members.iinet.net.au/~yusuf/taper/.
+
vh-1.6
Volks-Hypertext browser for the Jargon File
-
+ [14]http://www.bg.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html.
+
as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support alone:
-
- minicom-1.75
+
+ minicom
terminal emulator
-
- tin-unoff
- tin (unofficial) newsreader, supporting color, MIME
- [5]ftp://ftp.akk.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/news/clients/tin-unoff.
-
+ [15]http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~walker/minicom.html.
+
vile
- vi-like-emacs [6]ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/vile.
-
+ vi-like-emacs
+ [16]http://dickey.his.com/vile.
+
The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs
(including a few games).
-
+
Who's Who and What's What
- The original maintainer of ncurses is [7]Zeyd Ben-Halim.
- Unfortunately, he can only work on the package part time. As a result,
- since 1.8.1, much of the enhancement work and documentation has been
- done by [8]Eric S. Raymond. The current primary maintainers are
- [9]Thomas Dickey and [10]Juergen Pfeifer.
-
- There is an ncurses mailing list. It is a majordomo list; to join,
- write to ncurses-request@mailgate.bsdi.com with a message containing
- the line:
+ The original developers of ncurses are [17]Zeyd Ben-Halim and [18]Eric
+ S. Raymond. Ongoing work is being done by [19]Thomas Dickey and
+ [20]Jürgen Pfeifer. [21]Thomas Dickey acts as the maintainer for the
+ Free Software Foundation, which holds the copyright on ncurses.
+ Contact the current maintainers at [22]bug-ncurses@gnu.org.
+ To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to
+ bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org containing the line:
subscribe <name>@<host.domain>
This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the development
and testing of this package.
-
+
Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release are made
- available at [11]ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses.
-
+ available at [23]ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses.
+
Future Plans
- * Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm package.
* Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization
support.
* Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.
-
+
We need people to help with these projects. If you are interested in
working on them, please join the ncurses list.
-
-The terminfo/termcap Database
-
- The distribution includes and uses a copy of the terminfo-format
- terminal description file maintained by Eric Raymond. You can download
- either the [12]termcap or [13]terminfo versions of the terminal-type
- database from Eric's ncurses page,
- [14]http://www.ccil.org/~esr/ncurses.html.
-
+
Other Related Resources
+ The distribution includes and uses a version of the terminfo-format
+ terminal description file maintained by Eric Raymond.
+ [24]http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo.
+
You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics not
- covered in the terminfo file at [15]Richard Shuford's archive.
+ covered in the terminfo file at [25]Richard Shuford's archive.
References
- 1. ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses
- 2. ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/zm/zmbenhal/ncurses
- 3. ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu
- 4. ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ded
- 5. ftp://ftp.akk.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/news/clients/tin-unoff
- 6. ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/vile
- 7. mailto:zmbenhal@netcom.com
- 8. http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html
- 9. mailto:dickey@clark.net
- 10. mailto:Juergen.Pfeifer@T-Online.de
- 11. ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses
- 12. http://www.ccil.org/~esr/terminfo/termtypes.tc.gz
- 13. http://www.ccil.org/~esr/terminfo/termtypes.ti.gz
- 14. http://www.ccil.org/~esr/ncurses.html
- 15. http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal_index.html
+ 1. ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses
+ 2. ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses
+ 3. http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html
+ 4. http://dickey.his.com/cdk/cdk.html
+ 5. http://dickey.his.com/ded/ded.html
+ 6. http://dickey.his.com/dialog/dialog.html
+ 7. http://lynx.isc.org/release/
+ 8. file://localhost/usr/build/ncurses/ncurses-5.2-20001021/doc/html/www.gnome.org/mc/
+ 9. http://www.mutt.org/
+ 10. http://www.ncftp.com/
+ 11. http://www.bostic.com/vi/
+ 12. http://www.tin.org/
+ 13. http://members.iinet.net.au/~yusuf/taper/
+ 14. http://www.bg.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html
+ 15. http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~walker/minicom.html
+ 16. http://dickey.his.com/vile/vile.html
+ 17. mailto:zmbenhal@netcom.com
+ 18. http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html
+ 19. mailto:dickey@herndon4.his.com
+ 20. mailto:juergen.pfeifer@gmx.net
+ 21. mailto:dickey@herndon4.his.com
+ 22. mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org
+ 23. ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses
+ 24. http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo
+ 25. http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal_index.html
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