- 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 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;
- very few applications will require recompilation, depending on the
- platform. These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses
- 5.0 release.
-
- Interface changes:
- * made the extended terminal capabilities
- (configure --enable-tcap-names) a standard feature (though the
- configure script can disable it, it is built by default).
- * removed the trace() function and related trace support from the
- production library. This is the only interface change that may
- cause problems with existing applications linked to shared
- libraries, since not all platforms use the minor version number.
- * explicitly initialized to zero several data items which were
- implicitly initialized, e.g., cur_term. If not explicitly
- initialized, their storage type is C (common), and causes problems
- linking on some platforms.
- * modified curses.h.in, undef'ing some symbols to avoid conflict
- with C++ STL.
-
- New features:
- * added a new extension, assume_default_colors() to provide better
- control over the use of default colors. This is the principal
- visible difference between ncurses 5.1 and preceding versions. The
- new extension allows an application to specify what colors pair 0
- uses.
- NOTE: Pair 0 defaults to white on black unless you have invoked
- use_default_colors() or set it via assume_default_colors(). An
- application that calls start_colors() without setting the
- background color will consistently have a black background no
- matter what color your terminal's background actually is.
- * made several fixes to the terminfo-to-termcap conversion, and have
- been using the generated termcaps without further hand-tuning.
- This builds on the extension use_extended_names() by adding
- "obsolete" termcap strings to terminfo.src
- + modified tic so that if extended names (i.e.,
- configure --enable-tcap-names) are active, then tic -x will
- also write "obsolete" capabilities that are present in the
- terminfo source.
- + added screen's AX capability (for ECMA SGR 39 and 49) to
- applicable terminfo entries, use presence of this as a check
- for a small improvement in setting default colors.
- + add -a option to tic and infocmp, which retains commented-out
- capabilities during source translation/comparison, e.g.,
- captoinfo and infotocap.
- * implemented limited support for UTF-8, useful with XFree86 xterm:
- + if the configure --enable-widec option is given, append 'w'
- to names of the generated libraries (e.g., libncursesw.so) to
- avoid conflict with existing ncurses libraries.
- + add a simple UTF-8 output driver to the experimental
- wide-character support. If any of the environment variables
- LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE or LANG contain the string "UTF-8", this
- driver will be used to translate the output to UTF-8.
- + modified view.c to make a rudimentary viewer of UTF-8 text.
- * modify raw() and noraw() to clear/restore IEXTEN flag which
- affects stty lnext on systems such as FreeBSD
- * reordered tests during mouse initialization to allow for gpm to
- run in xterm, or for xterm to be used under OS/2 EMX. Also dropped
- test for $DISPLAY in favor of the terminfo capability kmous=\E[M
- or if $TERM environment variable contains "xterm".
- * added configure option --with-manpage-symlinks, which provides for
- fully indexing manpage entries by making symbolic links for the
- aliases.
- * changed unctrl() to render C1 characters (128-159) as ~@, ~A, etc.
- * add experimental configure option --enable-colorfgbg to check for
- $COLORTERM variable as set by rxvt/aterm/Eterm.
- * made the infocmp -F option less verbose.
- * dropped support for gnat 3.10 (gnat 3.12 is current).
-
- Major bug fixes:
- * modified infocmp -e, -E options to ensure that generated
- fallback.c type for Booleans agrees with term.h
- * documented a special case of incompatiblity between ncurses 4.2
- and 5.0, added a section for this in INSTALL.
- * corrected tests for file-descriptors in OS/2 EMX mouse support. A
- negative value could be used by FD_SET, causing the select() call
- to wait indefinitely.
- * made 'tput flash' work properly for xterm by flushing output in
- delay_output() when using napms(), and modifying xterm's terminfo
- to specify no padding character. Otherwise, xterm's reported baud
- rate could mislead ncurses into producing too few padding
- characters.
- * modified lib_addch.c to allow repeated update to the lower-right
- corner, rather than displaying only the first character written
- until the cursor is moved. Recent versions of SVr4 curses can
- update the lower-right corner, and behave this way.
- * modified echo() behavior of getch() to match Solaris curses for
- carriage return and backspace (reported by Neil Zanella).
- * corrected offsets used for subwindows in wresize()
- * modified configure script so AC_MSG_ERROR is temporarily defined
- to a warning in AC_PROG_CXX to make it recover from a missing C++
- compiler without requiring user to add --without-cxx option
- * corrected logic in lib_twait.c as used by lib_mouse.c for GPM
- mouse support when poll() is used rather than select().
- * made several fixes for buffer overflows, unchecked recursion,
- improvements in performance, etc. See the NEWS file for details.
-
- 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 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.
+ A variety of improvements were made to existing programs, both new
+ features as well as options added to make the set of programs more
+ consistent.
+ * add "-l" option to test/background, to dump screen contents in a
+ form that lets different curses implementations be compared.
+ * add "@" command to test/ncurses F-test, to allow rapid jump to
+ different character pages.
+ * added enum, regex examples to test/demo_forms
+ * amend Scaled256() macro in test/picsmap.c to cover the full range
+ 0..1000
+ * corrected pathname used in Ada95 sample programs for explain.txt,
+ to work with test-packages, and used an awk script to split the
+ resulting pathname when it would be too long for a single line.
+ * ignore interrupted system-call in test/ncurses's command-line,
+ e.g., if the terminal were resized.
+ * improved ifdef's for TABSIZE variable, to help with AIX/HPUX
+ ports.
+
+ Terminal database
+
+ There are several new terminal descriptions:
+
+ alacritty, domterm, kitty, mintty, mintty-direct, ms-terminal,
+ n7900, nsterm-build309, nsterm-direct, screen5, ti703, ti707,
+ ti703-w, ti707-w vscode, vscode-direct, xterm-mono, xterm.js
+
+ There are many changes to existing terminal descriptions. Some were
+ updates to several descriptions:
+ * use ansi+rep in a dozen places
+ * add rs1 to konsole, mlterm
+ * improve several flash capabilities with trailing mandatory delays
+ * drop ich1 from rxvt-basic, Eterm and mlterm to improve
+ compatibility with old non-curses programs
+ * add/use xterm+keypad in xterm-new
+ * use xterm+sl-twm for consistency, nine places
+ * improve xm example in xterm+x11mouse and xterm+sm_1006.
+
+ while others affected specific descriptions. These were retested, to
+ take into account changes by their developers:
+
+ terminator, st
+
+ while these are specific fixes based on reviewing documentation, user
+ reports, or warnings from tic:
+
+ adds200:
+
+ + fix typo
+
+ gnome-256color
+
+ + base entry on "gnome", not "vte", for consistency
+
+ interix
+
+ + trim unnecessary setf/setb
+
+ linux-16color
+
+ + accommodate Linux console driver incompatibility introduced
+ in early 2018
+
+ nsterm-256color:
+
+ + add nsterm-build309 to replace nsterm-256color, assigning the
+ latter as an alias of nsterm, to make mouse work with
+ nsterm-256color
+
+ regent40:
+
+ + renumber function-keys to match manual
+
+ regent60:
+
+ + add cd (clr_eos)
+ + corrected acsc
+ + add shifted function-keys
+
+ tvi950:
+
+ + added function-key definitions to agree with Televideo 950
+ manual
+ + corrected acsc
+ + remove bogus kf0
+ + add bel
+
+ tvi955:
+
+ + fix typo
+
+ vi200:
+
+ + add acsc string, including right/down-arrow
+
+ wy50:
+
+ + corrected acsc
+
+ wy50 and wy60:
+
+ + add shifted function-keys as kF1 to kF16
+
+ xterm+x11hilite:
+
+ + eliminate unused p5 parameter.
+
+ A few entries use extensions (user-defined terminal capabilities):
+ * use xterm+sm+1006 (aka "SGR 1006 mouse") for konsole-base and
+ putty
+ * add Smol/Rmol user-defined capability to tmux and vte-2018
+ * add Smulx user-defined capability to tmux, vte-2018
+
+ Documentation
+
+ As usual, this release
+ * improves documentation by describing new features,
+ * attempts to improve the description of features which users have
+ found confusing
+ * fills in overlooked descriptions of features which were described
+ in the NEWS file but treated sketchily in manual pages.
+
+ In addition to providing background information to explain these
+ features and show how they evolved, there are corrections,
+ clarifications, etc.:
+ * Corrections:
+ + correct error-returns listed in manual pages for a few form
+ functions
+ + corrected prototypes in several manpages using script to
+ extract those in compilable form.
+ + fix typo in term.5, improve explanation of format
+ * Clarify in manual pages that vwprintw and vwscanw are obsolete.
+ They have not been part of X/Open Curses since 2007.
+ * New/improved history and portability sections:
+ + curs_addch.3x gives some background for ACS symbols.
+ + curs_getcchar.3x explains a difference between ncurses and
+ X/Open Curses.
+ + curs_getstr.3x gives historical/portability background for
+ the length parameter of wgetnstr.
+ + curs_slk.3x lists a few differences between SVr4 curses and
+ X/Open Curses for soft-keys.
+ + curs_terminfo.3x explains that the initial implementation of
+ terminfo in SVr2 was mostly replaced by other developers in
+ SVr3.
+ + infocmp.1 explains that the initial version of terminfo had
+ no tool for decompiling descriptions. That came later, with
+ SVr3, with a different developer.
+ + tabs.1 tells more than you wanted to know about the tool.
+ + tic.1 explains that the initial version of terminfo had a
+ rudimentary tool (based on termcap) for compiling entries.
+ The tool used with Unix was developed by others for SVr3.
+ + toe.1 explains the origin of this tool.
+ * Improvements for user_caps.5:
+ + mention meml, memu and box1
+ + expanded description of XM
+ + add a clarification regarding the RGB capability.
+ + mention user_caps.5 in the tic and infocmp manual pages.
+ * Other improvements:
+ + curs_add_wch.3x adds note about Unicode terminology for the
+ line-drawing characters.
+ + curs_color.3x improves discussion of error returns and
+ extensions.
+ + curs_mouse.3x explains how the kmous and XM capabilities are
+ used for xterm-mouse input.
+ + curs_refresh.3x improves documentation regarding the virtual
+ and physical screens.
+ + curs_util.3x mentions a difference between SVr4 and X/Open
+ Curses for unctrl.h
+ + curs_variables.3x improves description of the init_tabs
+ capability and TABSIZE variable.
+ + ncurses.3x improves documentation regarding feature-test
+ macros in curses.h
+ + resizeterm.3x about top-level windows which touch the
+ screen's borders.
+ + tput.1 clarifies how tput determines the terminal size.
+
+ There are no new manual pages (all of the manual page updates are to
+ existing pages).
+
+ Some of the improvements are more subtle, relating to the way the
+ information is presented. For instance, the generated terminfo.5 file
+ uses a different table layout, allowing it to use space on wide
+ terminals more effectively.
+
+ Interesting bug-fixes
+
+ While there were many bugs fixed during development of ncurses 6.2,
+ only a few (the reason for this release) were both important and
+ interesting. Most of the bug-fixes were for local issues which did not
+ affect compatibility across releases. Since those are detailed in the
+ NEWS file no elaboration is needed here.
+
+ The interesting bugs were in tic/infocmp's handling of user-defined
+ capabilities. These were not recent bugs. Initially it was a simple
+ problem:
+ * The user-defined capabilities can be any type (boolean, number or
+ string), but once given a type all uses of the name must conform
+ to that type--unless some special support for a particular
+ multi-typed name is built into ncurses.
+ * One of simpleterm's contributors copied some definitions for using
+ tmux's user-defined capabilities in late in 2016.
+
+diff --git a/st.info b/st.info
+@@ -185,7 +185,10 @@ st| simpleterm,
+ tsl=\E]0;,
+ xenl,
+ vpa=\E[%i%p1%dd,
+-
++# Tmux unofficial extensions, see TERMINFO EXTENSIONS in tmux(1)
++ Se,
++ Ss,
++ Tc,
+
+ st-256color| simpleterm with 256 colors,
+ use=st,
+
+ * Later, in (referring to a version from mid-2017), a user asked to
+ have it updated in ncurses.
+ * However, it had an error from the change in late 2016. The
+ terminal description made what tmux expected to be string actually
+ a boolean.
+ Over the years, there were problems with each of simpleterm's
+ terminal descriptions. I repaired those, and usually dealt with
+ the problem.
+ * The difference in this case was that when compiling the terminal
+ database, tic may have in memory the definitions for more than one
+ terminal description (so that it can resolve "use=" clauses).
+ Seeing two different types for the same name, in certain
+ situations it would incorrectly merge the symbol tables for the
+ two terminal descriptions.
+ * On simpleterm's side, their bug was finally fixed in late 2019,
+ three years after the bug was created.
+
+ For ncurses, the elapsed time to fix this bug was less than three
+ years. Someone reported a problem with the terminal description a few
+ weeks after releasing ncurses 6.1 (in tmux #1264), and the terminal
+ description was updated that week (ncurses patch 20180224):
+
+20180224
+ + modify _nc_resolve_uses2() to detect incompatible types when merging
+ a "use=" clause of extended capabilities. The problem was seen in a
+ defective terminfo integrated from simpleterm sources in 20171111,
+ compounded by repair in 20180121.
+ + correct Ss/Ms interchange in st-0.7 entry (tmux #1264) -TD
+
+ The larger part of that change added a check to prevent a simple merge
+ of terminal descriptions where the same user-defined name was used
+ with different types. But it raised some questions:
+ * Was there a reliable way to manage terminal descriptions which
+ used the same extended name in different ways?
+ * Should ncurses provide a registry of well-known extended names,
+ with their types?
+
+ Since the correction to terminfo.src could have been readily adopted
+ by packagers, there was nothing more to be done from ncurses'
+ standpoint on that part. But improving ncurses to prevent issues like
+ that is the reason for making a release.
+
+ Nothing more (constructive) was mentioned with regard to simpleterm.
+ But a few problems were found in the handling of user-defined
+ capabilities:
+ * Forward-references to user-defined capabilities in a "use=" clause
+ did not allocate new data for each use. In tic, successive
+ compilation of terminal entries could add user-defined
+ capabilities to the wrong terminal entry.
+ This was not noticed before, since xterm's terminal descriptions
+ were the main users of the feature, and almost all of the uses of
+ the building-blocks which contained user-defined capabilities were
+ backward-references.
+ * There is one (documented) case where ncurses 6.1 supports a
+ user-defined capability that could be any type (i.e., "RGB"). The
+ check added in February 2018 to guard against mismatches did not
+ handle all of the combinations needed.
+
+ Both of these issues dated from the original implementation of
+ user-defined capabilities. Fixing them does not change the terminal
+ database, but a older tic without the fixes will not be able to handle
+ terminfo sources which rely upon those fixes. Starting in June 2019,
+ the download link for the terminfo source file was capped at that
+ date. The development sources have an up-to-date copy of the file, for
+ people with a legitimate need for it.
+
+ The "-c" (check) option of tic is not very useful if it cannot offer
+ advice on parameters needed for user-defined capabilities. The various
+ Caps files were reorganized to reduce redundancy, and in the common
+ portion (Caps-ncurses), a registry of user-defined capabilities is
+ provided for use by tic. While users can still define their own custom
+ capabilities, tic will not offer any advice when their parameters do
+ not match.
+
+ In ncurses 6.2, tic makes a special check to allow any type for RGB,
+ but its being able to do this relies upon fixes made in the ncurses
+ library in mid-2019.
+
+ Configuration changes
+
+ Major changes
+
+ There are no major changes. Several new options were added to ease
+ integration of packages with systems using different versions of GNAT
+ and ncurses. Also, improvements were made to configure checks.
+
+ Configuration options
+
+ There are a few new/modified configure options:
+
+ --with-config-suffix
+ helps work around a filename conflict with Debian packages
+ versus test-packages.
+
+ --with-ada-libname
+ allows one to rename the "AdaCurses" library (at least one
+ packager prefers a lowercase name).
+
+ --with-fallbacks
+ now ensures there is a value, and adds the fallback information
+ to top-level Makefile summary.
+
+ --with-pcre2
+ check for pcre-posix library to help with MinGW port.
+
+ --with-tic-path and
+
+ --with-infocmp-path
+ help work around problems building fallback source using
+ pre-6.0 tic/infocmp.
+
+ --with-versioned-syms
+ option value can now be a relative pathname.
+
+ Portability
+
+ Many of the portability changes are implemented via the configure
+ script:
+ * ignore $TERMINFO as a default value in configure script if it came
+ from the infocmp -Q option.
+ * distinguish gcc from icc and clang when the --enable-warnings
+ option is not used, to avoid unnecessary warnings about
+ unrecognized inline options
+ * consistently prepend new libraries as they are found during
+ configuration, rather than relying upon the linker to resolve
+ order dependencies of libraries.
+ * modified configure scripts to reduce relinking/ranlib during
+ library install :
+ + use "install -p" when available, to avoid need for ranlib of
+ static libraries.
+ + scripts which use "--disable-relink;" add a 1-second sleep to
+ work around tools which use whole-second timestamps, e.g., in
+ utime rather than the actual file system resolution.
+ * add configure check for getenv to work around implementation shown
+ in Emscripten which overwrites the previous return value on each
+ call.
+ Use that to optionally suppress START_TRACE macro, whose call to
+ getenv may not work properly
+ * change target configure level for _XOPEN_SOURCE to 600 to address
+ use of vsscanf and setenv.
+ * reduce use of _GNU_SOURCE for current glibc where _DEFAULT_SOURCE
+ combines with _XOPEN_SOURCE
+ Allow for Cygwin's newlib when checking for the _DEFAULT_SOURCE
+ symbol.
+ MidnightBSD is now checked for the _XOPEN_SOURCE-related
+ definitions.
+ * If the check for va_copy or __va_copy fails,
+ + configure now tries copying the pointers for va_list, or as
+ an array.
+ + alternatively, it checks for __builtin_va_copy(), which could
+ be used with AIX xlc in c89 mode.
+ * several changes to support a port to Ultrix 3.1:
+ + check if "b" binary feature of fopen works
+ + check for missing feature of locale.h
+ + add fallback for strstr() in test-programs
+ + add fallback for STDOUT_FILENO in test-programs
+ * The test/configure script (used for ncurses-examples) is improved:
+ + work around non-ncurses termcap.h file, e.g., in Slackware.
+ + check for TABSIZE variable.
+ + checks for the X11/Intrinsic.h header, accommodate recent
+ MacOS changes which largely emptied /usr/include.
+
+ Here are some of the other portability fixes:
+ * added dummy "check" rule in top-level and test-Makefile to
+ simplify building test-packages for ArchLinux.
+ * dropped library-dependency on psapi for MinGW port, since
+ win_driver.c defines PSAPI_VERSION to 2, making it use
+ GetProcessImageFileName from kernel32.dll
+ * made build-fixes for configuration using --program-suffix with
+ Ada95, noticed with MacOS but applicable to other platforms
+ without libpanelw, etc.
+ * modified ncurses/Makefile.in to fix a case where Debian/testing
+ changes to the ld --as-needed configuration broke ncurses-examples
+ test packages.
+ * used _WIN32/_WIN64 in preference to __MINGW32__/__MINGW64__
+ symbols to simplify building with Microsoft Visual C++, since the
+ former are defined in both compiler configurations.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+Features of ncurses
+
+ The ncurses package is fully upward-compatible with SVr4 (System V
+ Release 4) curses:
+ * All of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are documented).
+ * ncurses supports all of the for SVr4 curses features including
+ keyboard mapping, color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and
+ automatic recognition of keypad and function keys.
+ * ncurses provides these SVr4 add-on libraries (not part of X/Open
+ Curses):
+ + the panels library, supporting a stack of windows with
+ backing store.
+ + the menus library, supporting a uniform but flexible
+ interface for menu programming.
+ + the form library, supporting data collection through
+ on-screen forms.
+ * ncurses's terminal database is fully compatible with that used by
+ SVr4 curses.
+ + ncurses supports user-defined capabilities which it can see,
+ but which are hidden from SVr4 curses applications using the
+ same terminal database.
+ + It can be optionally configured to match the format used in
+ related systems such as AIX and Tru64.
+ + Alternatively, ncurses can be configured to use hashed
+ databases rather than the directory of files used by SVr4
+ curses.
+ * The ncurses 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.