- Announcing ncurses 6.1
+ Announcing ncurses 6.2
Overview
* It is used in almost every system based on the Linux kernel (aside
from some embedded applications).
* It is used as the system curses library on OpenBSD, FreeBSD and
- OSX.
+ MacOS.
* It is used in environments such as Cygwin and MinGW. The first of
these was EMX on OS/2 Warp.
* It is used (though usually not as the system curses) on all of the
* It should work readily on any ANSI/POSIX-conforming unix.
The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including
- * [1]captoinfo, a termcap conversion tool
- * [2]clear, utility for clearing the screen
- * [3]infocmp, the terminfo decompiler
- * [4]tabs, set tabs on a terminal
- * [5]tic, the terminfo compiler
- * [6]toe, list (table of) terminfo entries
- * [7]tput, utility for retrieving terminal capabilities in shell
+ * captoinfo, a termcap conversion tool
+ * clear, utility for clearing the screen
+ * infocmp, the terminfo decompiler
+ * tabs, set tabs on a terminal
+ * tic, the terminfo compiler
+ * toe, list (table of) terminfo entries
+ * tput, utility for retrieving terminal capabilities in shell
scripts
- * [8]tset, to initialize the terminal
+ * tset, to initialize the terminal
Full manual pages are provided for the library and tools.
- The ncurses distribution is available at ncurses' [9]homepage:
+ The ncurses distribution is available at ncurses' homepage:
- [10]ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/ or
- [11]https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/ .
+ ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/ or
+ https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/ .
It is also available via anonymous FTP at the GNU distribution site
- [12]ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/ .
+ ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/ .
Release Notes
- These notes are for ncurses 6.1, released January 27, 2018.
+ These notes are for ncurses 6.2, released February 12, 2020.
This release is designed to be source-compatible with ncurses 5.0
- through 6.0; providing extensions to the application binary interface
+ through 6.1; providing extensions to the application binary interface
(ABI). Although the source can still be configured to support the
- ncurses 5 ABI, the intent of the release is to provide extensions to
- the ncurses 6 ABI:
- * improve integration of tput and tset
- * provide support for extended numeric capabilities.
+ ncurses 5 ABI, the reason for the release is to reflect improvements
+ to the ncurses 6 ABI and the supporting utility programs.
There are, of course, numerous other improvements, listed in this
announcement.
- The release notes also mention some bug-fixes, but are focused on new
- features and improvements to existing features since ncurses 6.0
- release.
+ The most important bug-fixes/improvements dealt with user-defined
+ capabilities in terminal descriptions. The release notes also mention
+ some other bug-fixes, but are focused on new features and improvements
+ to existing features since ncurses 6.1 release.
Library improvements
New features
- The improved integration of tput and tset made only small changes to
- the libraries. However, supporting extended numeric capabilities
- required a few changes:
- * The TERMINAL structure in <term.h> is now opaque. Doing that
- allowed making the structure larger, to hold the extended numeric
- data.
- A few applications required changes during development of
- ncurses 6.1 because those applications misused the members of that
- structure, e.g., directly modifying it rather than using
- [13]def_prog_mode.
- * Having made TERMINAL opaque (and because none of the library
- functions use anything except a pointer to TERMINAL), it was
- possible to increase the size of the structure, adding to the end.
- Existing applications which were linked to the ncurses 6.0
- high-level (ncurses, ncursesw) and low-level (tinfo, tinfo)
- libraries should not require re-linking since the binary interface
- did not change, nor did the structure offsets with TERMINAL
- change.
- A few applications use the inner TERMTYPE structure's offsets to
- refer to terminfo capabilities within that structure. Again, those
- do not require modification because their offsets within TERMINAL
- did not change.
- * When configured for wide-characters, i.e., "ncursesw" the TERMINAL
- structure is extended.
- The new data in TERMINAL holds the same information as TERMTYPE,
- but with larger numbers ("int" versus "short"). It is named
- TERMTYPE2.
- The library uses this structure internally in preference to
- TERMTYPE, referring to TERMTYPE only to initialize it for
- applications that use the capabilities defined in <term.h>
- * When configured for 8-bit (narrow) characters, the TERMTYPE2
- structure is not used.
- * The updated application binary interface is 6.1.20171230 (used for
- new [14]versioned symbols), although the interface changes were
- developed several months previously.
-
- The motivation for making this extension came from noticing that
- [15]termcap applications could (though not [16]realistically) use
- larger numbers than would fit in 16-bits, and the fact that the number
- of color pairs for a 256-color xterm could not be expressed in
- terminfo (i.e., 32767 versus 65536). Also, a few terminals support
- direct-colors, which could use the extension.
-
- Generally speaking, applications that use internal details of a
- library are unsupported. There was exactly one exception for ncurses:
- the tack program used the internal details of TERMINAL, because it
- provides an ncurses-specific feature for interactively modifying a
- terminfo description and writing the updated description to a
- text-file. It was possible to not only separate tack from these
- [17]internal details of ncurses, but to generalize it so that the
- program works with Unix curses (omitting the ncurses-specific
- feature). That was released as [18]tack 1.08 in July 2017.
-
- While making changes to tack to eliminate its dependency upon ncurses
- internals, the publicly-visible details of those internals were
- reviewed, and some symbols were moved to private header files, while
- others were marked explicitly as ncurses internals. Future releases of
- ncurses may eliminate some of those symbols (such as those used by
- tack 1.07) because they are neither part of the API or the ABI.
-
- Using the TERMTYPE2 extended numeric capabilities, it is possible to
- support both color pair values and color values past 32767. Taking
- compatibility into account, developers readily understand that neither
- function signatures nor structure offsets change. Also, existing
- functions have to operate with the extended numbers. Most of that work
- is internal to the library. For the external interfaces, a hybrid
- approach was used:
- * X/Open Curses defined function prototypes such as wattr_set with
- an unused parameter, for "future" use. After 25 years, the future
- is here: ncurses uses the parameter to augment color pair values
- as described in the [19]manual page.
- * Other functions such as those defining color pairs did not have a
- corresponding reserved parameter. For those, ncurses defines
- extended versions such as init_extended_pair (versus init_pair),
- init_extended_color (versus init_color).
+ There are several new features:
+ * O_EDGE_INSERT_STAY tells the form library to optionally delay
+ cursor movement on a field edge/boundary
+ * O_INPUT_FIELD extension to form library allows a dynamic field to
+ shrink if the new limit is smaller than the current field size.
+ * added exit_curses and exit_terminfo to replace internal symbols
+ for leak-checking.
+ * added curses_trace, to replace trace().
Additionally, to improve performance other changes (and extensions)
are provided in this release:
- * Several new functions simplify management of large sets of color
- pairs: reset_color_pairs, alloc_pair, find_pair and free_pair.
- * New "RGB" extension capability for direct-color support is used to
- improve performance of color_content.
- * The internal colorpair_t is now a struct, eliminating an internal
- 8-bit limit on colors
- * Allocation for SCREEN's color-pair table starts small, grows on
- demand up to the limit given in the terminal description.
- * setcchar and getcchar now treat a negative color-pair as an error.
+ * mouse decoding now handles shift/control/alt logic when decoding
+ xterm's 1006 mode
+ * ncurses now defines a limit for wgetnstr, wgetn_wstr when length
+ is negative or "too large".
+ * reordered loop-limit checks in winsnstr in case the string has no
+ terminating null and only the number of characters is used.
+ * there is now no buffer-size limit when reading the $TERMCAP
+ variable.
+ * the $TERMCAP variable may be interpreted as a fallback to a
+ terminfo entry
+ * mvcur now decides whether to use hard-tabs, using xt, tbc and hts
+ as clues.
+ * extended colors are improved by modifying an internal call to
+ vid_puts to pass extended color pairs e.g., from tty_update.c and
+ lib_mvcur.c
+ * the initialization functions now avoid relying upon persistent
+ data for the result from getenv
+ * scrolling is improved:
+ + a limit check in newline_forces_scroll handles the case where
+ the row is inside scroll-margins, but not at the end.
+ + improved loop limits in _nc_scroll_window handle a case where
+ the scrolled data is a pad which is taller than the window.
Other improvements
- These are new or revised features:
- * modify c++/etip.h.in to accommodate deprecation of throw and
- throws in c++17
- * add new function unfocus_current_field
- * add option to preserve leading whitespace in form fields
- * add a macro for is_linetouched and adjust the function's return
- value to make it possible for most applications to check for an
- error-return.
- * add build-time utility report_offsets to help show when the
- various configurations of tinfo library are compatible or not.
+ These are revised features:
+ * used "const" in some prototypes rather than NCURSES_CONST where
+ X/Open Curses was updated to do this, e.g., wscanw, newterm, the
+ terminfo interface. Also use "const" for consistency in the
+ termcap interface, which was withdrawn by X/Open Curses in Issue 5
+ (2007). As of Issue 7, X/Open Curses still lacks "const" for
+ certain return values, e.g., keyname.
+ * modified wbkgd and wbkgrnd to improve compatibility with SVr4
+ curses, changing the way the window rendition is updated when the
+ background character is modified
+ * improved terminfo write/read by modifying the fourth item of the
+ extended header to denote the number of valid strings in the
+ extended string table (see term(5)).
+ * modified the initialization checks for mouse so that the
+ xterm+sm+1006 block will work with terminal descriptions not
+ mentioning xterm.
These were done to limit or ultimately deprecate features:
- * drop two symbols obsoleted in 2004: _nc_check_termtype, and
- _nc_resolve_uses
- * move _nc_tracebits, _tracedump and _tracemouse to curses.priv.h,
- since they are not part of the suggested ABI6.
- * mark some structs in form/menu/panel libraries as potentially
- opaque without modifying API/ABI.
- * ifdef'd header-file definition of mouse_trafo with
- NCURSES_NOMACROS
- * remove initialization-check for calling napms in the term-driver
- configuration; none is needed.
- * modify trace to avoid overwriting existing file
+ * deprecated safe-sprintf, since the vsnprintf function, which does
+ what was needed, was standardized long ago.
+ * marked vwprintw and vwscanw as deprecated; recommend using
+ vw_printw and vw_scanw, respectively.
+ * added deprecation warnings for internal functions called by older
+ versions of tack.
+ * removed unused _nc_import_termtype2 function.
These are improvements to existing features:
- * modify make_hash to allow building with address-sanitizer,
- assuming that --disable-leaks is configured.
- * move SCREEN field for use_tioctl data before the ncursesw fields,
- and limit that to the sp-funcs configuration to improve termlib
- compatibility
- * modify db-iterator:
- + ignore zero-length files in db-iterator; these are useful for
- instance to suppress $HOME/.terminfo when not wanted.
- + modify update_getenv to ensure that environment variables
- which are not initially set will be checked later if an
- application happens to set them
- * modify _nc_outc_wrapper to use the standard output if the screen
- was not initialized, rather than returning an error.
- * improve checks for low-level terminfo functions when the terminal
- has not been initialized.
- * modify set_curterm to update ttytype[] data used by longname/p>
- * modify _nc_get_screensize to allow for use_env and use_tioctl
- state to be per-screen when sp-funcs are configured, better
- matching the behavior when using the term-driver configuration.
- * remove an early-return from _nc_do_color, which can interfere with
- data needed by bkgd when ncurses is configured with extended
- colors
- * incorporate A_COLOR mask into COLOR_PAIR, in case user application
- provides an out-of-range pair number
- * modify logic for endwin-state to be able to detect the case where
- the screen was never initialized, using that to trigger a flush of
- ncurses' buffer for mvcur, e.g., in the sample program dots_mvcur
- for the term-driver configuration.
+ * check parameter of set_escdelay, return ERR if negative.
+ * check parameter of set_tabsize, return ERR if not greater than
+ zero
+ * correct a status-check in _nc_read_tic_entry() so that if reading
+ a hex/b64 $TERMINFO, and the $TERM does not match, fall-through to
+ the compiled-in search list.
+ * amend check for repeat_char to handle a case where setlocale() was
+ called after initscr
+ * move macro for is_linetouched inside NCURSES_NOMACROS ifndef.
+ * use _nc_copy_termtype2 rather than direct assignment in setupterm,
+ in case it is called repeatedly using fallback terminfo
+ descriptions
+ * improve workaround for Solaris wcwidth versus line-drawing
+ characters
+ * add checks in repair_subwindows to keep the current position and
+ scroll-margins inside the resized subwindow.
+ * correct a buffer-limit in write_entry.c for systems that use
+ caseless filenames.
+ * improved build-time utility report_offsets:
+ + add categories, e.g., "w" for wide-character, "t" for threads
+ to make the report more readable. Reorganized the structures
+ reported to make the categories more apparent.
+ + add NCURSES_GLOBALS and NCURSES_PRESCREEN to report to show
+ how similar the different libtinfo configurations are.
+ * modified some header files to ensure that those include necessary
+ files except for the previously-documented cases
+ * added some traces in initialization to show whether a fallback
+ entry is used.
+ * made minor optimization to reduce calls to _nc_reserve_pairs
These are corrections to existing features:
- * fixes for writing extended color pairs in putwin.
- * modify no-leaks code for lib_cur_term.c to account for the tgetent
- cache.
- * amend handling of the repeat_char capability in EmitRange to avoid
- scope creep: translate the character to the alternate character
- set when the alternate character set is enabled, and do not use
- repeat_char for characters past 255.
- * improve wide-character implementation of myADDNSTR in
- frm_driver.c, which was inconsistent with the normal
- implementation.
- * modify winnstr and winchnstr to return error if the output pointer
- is null, as well as adding a null pointer check of the window
- pointer for better compatibility with other implementations.
- * modify setupterm to save original tty-modes so that erasechar
- works as expected. Also modify _nc_setupscreen to avoid redundant
- calls to get original tty-modes.
- * modify wattr_set and wattr_get to return ERR if win-parameter is
- null, as documented.
- * correct order of initialization for traces in use_env and
- use_tioctl versus first _tracef calls.
- * correct parameters for copywin call in _nc_Synchronize_Attributes
- * flush the standard output in _nc_flush for the case where SP is
- zero, e.g., when called via putp. This fixes a scenario where
- "tput flash" did not work after changes in 20130112.
- * amend internal use of tputs to consistently use the number of
- lines affected, e.g., for insert/delete character operations.
- While merging terminfo source early in 1995, several descriptions
- used the "*" proportional delay for these operations, prompting a
- change in doupdate.
- * correct return-value of extended putwin.
- * double-width multibyte characters were not counted properly in
- winsnstr and wins_nwstr.
- * amend fix for _nc_ripoffline from 20091031 to make test/ditto.c
- work in threaded configuration.
- * modify _nc_viscbuf2 and _tracecchar_t2 to trace wide-characters as
- a whole rather than their multibyte equivalents.
- * minor fix in wadd_wchnstr to ensure that each cell has nonzero
- width.
- * move PUTC_INIT calls next to wcrtomb calls, to avoid carry-over of
- error status when processing Unicode values which are not mapped.
- * add missing assignment in lib_getch.c to make notimeout work
+ * fix a special case in PutAttrChar where a cell is marked as
+ alternate-character set, but the terminal does not actually
+ support the given graphic character. This would happen in an older
+ terminal such as vt52, which lacks most line-drawing capability.
+ * corrected flag for "seq" method of db 1.8.5 interface, needed by
+ toe on some of the BSDs.
+ * modify comparison in make_hash.c to correct a special case in
+ collision handling for Caps-hpux11
+ * add extended_slk_color{,_sp} symbols to the appropriate
+ package/*.{map,sym} files
+ * modify lib_setup to avoid calling pthread_self() without first
+ verifying that the address is valid, i.e., for weak symbols
+ * add a couple of broken-linker symbols to the list of versioned
+ symbols to help with link-time optimization versus weak symbols.
Program improvements
- While reviewing user feedback, it became apparent that the differences
- between [20]reset (an alias for tset) and "tput reset" were confusing:
- * one ([21]tset) updated the terminal modes, but used only part of
- the terminfo capabilities for initialization, while
- * the other ([22]tput) used all of the terminal capabilities while
- neglecting the terminal modes.
-
- On further investigation, it turned out that the differences were
- largely an accident due to the way those programs had evolved.
-
- This release eliminates the unnecessary differences, using the same
- approach for tput's init (initialization), reset and clear operations
- as the separate [23]reset and [24]clear programs. Doing this does not
- change the command-line options; existing scripts are unaffected.
-
- These are the user-visible changes for the three programs (tput, tset
- and clear):
- * add the terminal-mode parts of "reset" (aka tset) to the "tput
- reset" command, making the two almost the same except for
- window-size.
- * improve tput's check for being called as "init" or "reset" to
- allow for transformed names.
- * add "clear" as a possible link/alias to tput.
- * amend changes for tput to reset tty modes to "sane" if the program
- is run as "reset", like tset. Likewise, ensure that tset sends
- either reset- or init-strings.
- * add -x option to clear/tput to make the E3 extension optional
- * add functionality of "tset -w" to tput, like the "-c" feature this
- is not optional in tput.
- * add options -T and -V to clear command for compatibility with
- tput.
- * drop long-obsolete "-n" option from tset.
- * modify tset's assignment to TERM in its output to reflect the name
- by which the terminal description is found, rather than the
- primary name. That was an unnecessary part from the initial
- conversion of tset from termcap to terminfo. The termcap library
- in 4.3BSD did this to avoid using the short 2-character name
- * remove a restriction in tput's support for termcap names which
- omitted capabilities normally not shown in termcap translations
- * add usage message to clear command
- * improve usage messages for tset and tput.
-
- Other user-visible improvements and new features include:
- * modify tic/infocmp display of numeric values to use hexadecimal
- when they are "close" to a power of two, making the result more
- readable.
- * add "-W" option to tic/infocmp to force long strings to wrap.
- + This is in addition to the "-w" option which attempts to fit
- capabilities into a given line-length.
- + If "-f" option splits line, do not further split it with
- "-W".
- + Begin a new line when adding "use=" after a wrapped line.
- * add "-q" option to infocmp to suppress the "Reconstructed from"
- comment from the header, and a corresponding option to tic to
- suppress all comments from the "tic -I" output.
- * Sorted options in usage message for infocmp, to make it simpler to
- see unused letters.
- * Updated usage message for tic, adding "-0" option.
- * add infocmp/tic "-Q" option, which allows one to dump the compiled
- form of the terminal entry, in hexadecimal or base64:
- + A "b64:" prefix in the TERMINFO variable tells the terminfo
- reader to use base64 according to RFC-3548 as well as
- RFC-4648 url/filename-safe format.
- + A "hex:" prefix tells the terminfo reader to accept
- hexadecimal data as generated by "infocmp -0qQ1".
-
- Other less-visible improvements and new features include:
- * modify utility headers such as tic.h to make it clearer which are
- externals that are used by tack.
- * add "reset" to list of programs whose names might change in
- manpages due to program-transformation configure options.
- * modify "-T" option of clear and tput to call use_tioctl to obtain
- the operating system's notion of the screensize if possible.
- * add check in tput for init/reset operands to ensure those use a
- terminal.
- * modify programs clear, tabs, tput and tset to pass the actual tty
- file descriptor to setupterm rather than the standard output or
- error, making padding work.
- * change tset's initialization to allow it to get settings from the
- standard input as well as /dev/tty, to be more effective when
- output or error are redirected.
- * amend check in tput, tabs and clear to allow those to use the
- database-only features in cron if a "-T" option gives a suitable
- terminal name.
- * improve error message from tset/reset when both stderr/stdout are
- redirected to a file or pipe.
-
- Several of the less apparent features deal with translation of
- terminfo to termcap (and the reverse), with corresponding checks by
- tic:
- * modify check in fmt_entry to handle a cancelled reset string. Make
- similar fixes in other parts of dump_entry.c and tput.c
- * correct read of terminfo entry in which all strings are absent or
- explicitly cancelled. Before this fix, the result was that all
- were treated as only absent.
- * modify infocmp to suppress mixture of absent/cancelled
- capabilities that would only show as "NULL, NULL", unless the "-q"
- option is used, e.g., to show "-, @" or "@, -".
- * correct a warning from tic about keys which are the same, to skip
- over missing/cancelled values.
- * add check in tic for use of bold, etc., video attributes in the
- color capabilities, accounting whether the feature is listed in
- ncv.
- * add check in tic for unnecessary use of "2" to denote a shifted
- special key.
- * improve check in tic for delays by also warning about beep/flash
- when a delay is not embedded, or if those use the VT100 reverse
- video escape without using a delay.
- * improve checks in trim_sgr0, comp_parse.c and parse_entry.c, for
- cancelled string capabilities.
- * add check in tic for some syntax errors of delays, as well as use
- of proportional delays for non-line capabilities.
- * add check in tic for conflict between ritm, rmso, rmul versus
- sgr0.
- * add check in _nc_parse_entry for invalid entry name, setting the
- name to "invalid" to avoid problems storing entries.
- * improve _nc_tparm_analyze, using that to extend the checks made by
- tic for reporting inconsistencies between the expected number of
- parameters for a capability and the actual.
- * remove tic warning about "^?" in string capabilities, which was
- marked as an extension; however all Unix implementations support
- this and X/Open Curses does not address it. On the other hand,
- [25]BSD termcap did not support this feature (until the
- [26]mid-1990s).
- in _nc_infotocap, added a check to ensure that terminfo "^?" is
- not written to termcap.
- * modify sscanf calls in _nc_infotocap for patterns "%{number}%+%c"
- and "%'char'%+%c" to check that the final character is really "c",
- avoiding a case in icl6404 which cannot be converted to termcap.
- * in _nc_tic_expand and _nc_infotocap, improved string-length check
- when deciding whether to use "^X" or "\xxx" format for control
- characters, to make the output of tic/infocmp more predictable.
- * limited termcap "%d" width to 2 digits on input, and use "%2" in
- preference to "%02" on output.
- * correct terminfo/termcap conversion of "%02" and "%03" into "%2"
- and "%3"; the result repeated the last character.
+ Several improvements were made to the utility programs:
- Examples
+ clear
- Along with the library and utilities, many improvements were made to
- the [27]ncurses-examples.
-
- These changes were made to demonstrate new extensions in ncurses:
- * add demo_new_pair program, to demonstrate [28]alloc_pair,
- [29]find_pair and [30]free_pair functions.
- This program iterates over the possible color combinations,
- allocating or initializing color pairs. For best results, choose
- screen-width dividing evenly into the number of colors. e.g.,
-
- 32x64,32x128 256 colors
- 24x44,24x88 88 colors
- 32x64,24x128 16 colors
-
- * add extended_color program, like the older color_set program, but
- using the extended color functions, with and without the
- SP-functions interface.
- * add picsmap program to fill in some testing issues not met by
- dots, using this as the third example in a comparison of the
- [31]ncurses versus slang libraries.
- The program can directly read X bitmap and pixmap files,
- displaying a picture. It can read other image files using
- ImageMagick's convert program to translate the image into text.
- For 16-, 88- and 256-color terminal descriptions, picsmap can load
- a palette file which tells it which color palette entries to use.
- For direct-colors, the terminal descriptions use the RGB extension
- capability.
+ + improved logic for clearing with the E3 extension, in case
+ the terminal scrolls content onto its saved-lines before
+ actually clearing the display, by clearing the saved-lines
+ after clearing the display
- There are other new example programs and a few scripts:
- * add dots_xcurses program to illustrate a different approach used
- for extended colors which can be contrasted with dots_curses.
- * add list_keys program show function keys for one or more terminal
- descriptions. It uses ncurses's convention of modifiers for
- special keys, based on xterm.
- * add padview program, to compare pads with direct updates in the
- view program.
- * add sp_tinfo program to exercise the SP-functions extension of the
- low-level terminfo library.
- * add test-programs for termattrs and term_attrs functions.
- * add test_sgr program to exercise all combinations of the sgr
- capability.
- * add tput-colorcube demo script, imitating xterm's 88- and
- 256-color scripts using tput.
- * add tput-initc script to demonstrate how tput may be used to
- initialize a color palette from a data file.
+ infocmp
+
+ + omit filtering of "OTxx" names which are used for obsolete
+ capabilities, when the output is sorted by long-names. This
+ change helps when making a table of the short/long capability
+ names.
+
+ tic
+
+ + added check for consistent alternate character set
+ capabilities.
+ + added check for paired indn/rin.
+ + added check for terminals with parm_dch vs parm_ich.
+ + added check for the case where setf/setb are given using
+ different strings, but provide identical results to
+ setaf/setab.
+ + corrected check for ich1.
+ + changed a too-large terminal entry from a fatal error to a
+ warning.
+
+ toe
+
+ + ignores any hex/b64 $TERMINFO value in the list of terminfo
+ databases.
+
+ tset
+
+ + replace check in reset command for obsolete "pt" capability
+ using tbc and hts capabilities as clues
+ + modify reset to allow for tabstops at intervals other than 8.
+ + change reset's behavior for margins to simply clear
+ soft-margins if possible, rather than clearing and then
+ setting them according to the terminal's width.
+
+ tput
+
+ + add "x" to getopt string so that "tput -x clear" works.
+
+ Several changes were made to the generated ncurses*config scripts and
+ the analogous ".pc" files to reduce differences between the
+ configurations they report:
+ * modified the ncurse*-config and pc-files to more closely match for
+ the -I and -l options.
+ * filtered out linker-specs from the --libs report.
+ * amended the ncurses*-config and pc-files to take into account the
+ rpath hack which differed between those files.
+ * modified generated ncurses*config and ncurses.pc, ncursesw.pc,
+ etc., to list helper libraries such as gpm for static linking.
+
+ Examples
+
+ Along with the library and utilities, improvements were made to the
+ ncurses-examples. Most of this activity aimed at improving the
+ test-packages. A few changes are more generally useful, e.g., for the
+ main ncurses test-program, and for analyzing traces using the
+ tracemunch script:
+ * improve recovery from error when reading command-character in
+ test/ncurses.c, showing the relevant error message and not exiting
+ on EINTR.
+ * improve tracemunch, by keeping track of TERMINAL* values, and if
+ tracing was first turned on after initialization, attempt to show
+ distinct screen, window and terminal names anyway.
+ * modify tracemunch to accept filename parameters in addition to use
+ as a pipe/filter.
+ * update tracemunch to work with perl 5.26.2, which changed the
+ rules for escaping regular expressions.
+ * add some checks in tracemunch for undefined variables.
+ * modify TurnOn/TurnOff macros (in lib_vidattr.c and lib_vid_attr.c)
+ to avoid expansion of "CUR" in trace.
+
+ There are other new demo/test programs and reusable examples:
+
+ color_content
+ Demonstrate the color_content and extended_color_content
+ functions.
+
+ demo_tabs
+ A simple demo of tabs in curses.
+
+ dump_window
+ A portable curses screen-dump, used to compare ncurses screen
+ contents with Solaris.
+
+ pair_content
+ Demonstrate the pair_content and extended_pair_content
+ functions.
+
+ report_hashing
+ Check hash-tables used for terminfo and termcap names.
+
+ parse_rgb
+ Sample implementation of the ncurses RGB extension from
+ user_caps.5, used in picsmap and savescreen programs.
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.
-
- The ncurses program is the largest; a proportionately large number of
- changes were made to it:
- * modify a/A screens to make exiting on an escape character depend
- on the start of keypad and timeout modes, to allow better testing
- of function-keys.
- add "t" toggle for notimeout function.
- * modify layout of b/B screens to allow for additional annotation on
- the right margin; some terminals with partial support did not
- display well.
- * modify c/C screens to allow for extended color pairs.
- add z/Z zoom feature to make extended color pairs easier to test.
- modify test-screens to take advantage of wide screens, reducing
- the number of lines used for 88- and 256-colors.
- * modify "d" edit-color screen to optionally read xterm color
- palette directly from terminal, as well as handling KEY_RESIZE and
- screen-repainting with control/L and control/R.
- * add examples to "F" screen for WACS_D_PLUS and WACS_T_PLUS.
- * improve "g" screen, correcting ifdef which made the legend not
- reflect changes to keypad- and scroll-modes. Added check for
- return-value of putwin.
- * make "s" test easier to understand which subtests are available
- add a corresponding "S" wide-character overlap test-screen.
- * add "v" screen to show baudrate and other values.
-
- These changes were made to the other examples:
- * modify blue program to use Unicode values for card-glyphs when
- available, as well as improving the check for CP437 and CP850.
- * improve demo_menus program, allowing mouse-click on the
- menu-headers to switch the active menu. This requires a new
- extension option O_MOUSE_MENU to tell the menu driver to put mouse
- events which do not apply to the active menu back into the queue
- so that the application can handle the event.
- * correct logic in demo_terminfo program for "-f" option
- * modify ditto program to allow $XTERM_PROG environment variable to
- override "xterm" as the name of the program to run in the threaded
- configuration.
- * add several options to the "dots" test-programs.
- * modify filter program:
- + illustrate an alternative to getnstr, that polls for input
- while updating a clock on the right margin as well as
- responding to window size-changes.
- + adapt logic used in [32]dialog [33]"--keep-tite" option for
- filter program as the "-a" option. When set, filter attempts
- to suppress the alternate screen.
- * modify knight program to provide the "slow" solution for small
- screens using "R", noting that Warnsdorf's method is easily done
- with "a".
- * modify the savescreen program to add test patterns that exercise
- 88-, 256-, etc., colors.
- * add options to test_arrays, for selecting termcap vs terminfo,
- etc.
- * modify the view program:
- + expand tabs using the ncurses library rather than in the
- test-program.
- + eliminate the "-n" option by simply reading the whole file.
- + implement page up/down commands.
- + remove the very old SIGWINCH example; just use KEY_RESIZE.
- * improve animation in xmas program by adding a time-delay in
- blinkit.
- * modify several test-programs which call use_default_colors to
- consistently do this only if the "-d" option is given.
- * modify the install-rule for ncurses-examples to put the data files
- in the data directory, e.g., /usr/share/ncurses-examples.
- * modify several test programs to use new popup_msgs function,
- adapted from the help-screen used in the edit_field program.
- * modify test data for xterm palettes to use the newer
- color4/color12 values.
- * improve the tracemunch script:
- + show screenXX pointers and thread identifiers as names.
- + chang address-parameters of add_wch, color_content and
- pair_content to dummy parameters.
+ * 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:
- dumb-emacs-ansi, dvtm, dvtm-256color, fbterm, iterm2, linux-m1
- minitel entries, putty-noapp, viewdata, and vt100+4bsd
- building-block.
-
- xterm+noalt, xterm+titlestack, xterm+alt1049, xterm+alt+title
- building blocks and xterm+direct, xterm+indirect, xterm-direct.
- from [34]xterm patch #331.
-
- several other "-direct" descriptions to address the differences of
- other terminal emulators versus xterm-direct.
+ 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 xterm+sm+1006 in several terminal descriptions which were
- validated as supporting the extended mouse feature for their
- respective terminal emulators.
- * corrected sgr/sgr0 strings in a few cases reported by tic, making
- those correspond to the non-sgr settings where they differ, but
- otherwise use ECMA-48 consistently.
- * add 0.1sec mandatory delay to flash capabilities using the VT100
- reverse-video control
+ * 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 new/undocumented changes by their developers:
+ take into account changes by their developers:
- iterm, minitel, st, viewdata, nsterm
+ terminator, st
- while these are specific fixes based on user reports, or warnings from
- tic:
+ while these are specific fixes based on reviewing documentation, user
+ reports, or warnings from tic:
- [35]ansi building blocks
+ adds200:
- + restored rmir/smir in ansi+idc to better match original
- ansiterm+idc, add alias ansiterm
+ + fix typo
- [36]icl6402
+ gnome-256color
- + corrected missing comma-separator between string capabilities
- in icl6402 and m2-nam
+ + base entry on "gnome", not "vte", for consistency
- [37]interix
+ interix
- + updated using tack and SFU with Windows 7 Ultimate.
- + used ^? for kdch1
+ + trim unnecessary setf/setb
- [38]linux
+ linux-16color
- + made linux3.0 entry the default linux entry
- + modify linux2.6 entry to improve line-drawing so that the
- linux3.0 entry can be used in non-UTF-8 mode
- + omitted selection of ISO-8859-1 for G0 in enacs capability
- from linux2.6 entry, to avoid conflict with the user-defined
- mapping. The reset feature uses ISO-8859-1 in any case.
- + modify flash capability for linux and wyse entries to put the
- delay between the reverse/normal escapes rather than after
- + modify linux-16color to not mask dim, standout or reverse
- with the ncv capability
+ + accommodate Linux console driver incompatibility introduced
+ in early 2018
- [39]pccon entries
+ nsterm-256color:
- + fixed some inconsistencies in the pccon* entries
- + add bold to pccon+sgr+acs and pccon-base
- + add keys f12-f124 to pccon+keys
+ + add nsterm-build309 to replace nsterm-256color, assigning the
+ latter as an alias of nsterm, to make mouse work with
+ nsterm-256color
- [40]tmux
+ regent40:
- + corrected sgr string, which used screen's "standout" code
- rather than the standard code.
- + add settings corresponding to xterm-keys option to reflect
- upcoming change to make that option "on" by default
- + uncanceled Ms
+ + renumber function-keys to match manual
- [41]vt100
+ regent60:
- + modify vt100 rs2 string to reset vt52 mode and scrolling
- regions
- + corrected rs2 string for vt100-nam
- + made minor fixes for vt100+4bsd, e.g., delay in sgr for
- consistency
+ + add cd (clr_eos)
+ + corrected acsc
+ + add shifted function-keys
- [42]vte
+ tvi950:
- + moved SGR 24 and 27 from vte-2014 to vte-2012
- + add a few capabilities fixed in recent VTE development
+ + added function-key definitions to agree with Televideo 950
+ manual
+ + corrected acsc
+ + remove bogus kf0
+ + add bel
- [43]xterm
+ tvi955:
- + add rep to xterm-new, available since [44]late 1996.
- + modify xterm+256color and xterm+256setaf to use correct
- number of color pairs.
- + modify rs1 for xterm-16color, xterm-88color and
- xterm-256color to reset palette using oc string as in linux
- entry.
- + add rs1 capability to xterm-256color
- + add oc capability to xterm+256color, allowing palette reset
- for xterm
- + add op to xterm+256setaf
- + modify xterm-r5, xterm-r6 and xterm-xf86-v32 to use xterm+kbs
- to match [45]xterm #272, reflecting packager's changes
- + used ANSI reply for u8 in xterm-new, to reflect vt220-style
- responses that could be returned.
- + made xterm-pcolor sgr consistent with other capabilities
+ + 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):
- * add rmxx/smxx ECMA-48 strikeout extension to tmux and xterm-basic
- * used RGB capability in new *-direct entries to denote direct-color
- feature.
+ * 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
* attempts to improve the description of features which users have
found confusing
* fills in overlooked descriptions of features which were described
- in the [46]NEWS file but treated sketchily in manual pages.
-
- In particular,
- * Since the underlying features for [47]tset, [48]tput, and
- [49]clear have been better integrated, the documentation now
- includes information on how those tools evolved.
- In addition to explaining the improved integration of the tools,
- the manual pages made it easier to see how the tools are similar
- and how they are different.
- * The addch manual page has additional information on
- [50]portability and differences from other implementations.
- * The discussion of color-pairs in the attributes manual page is
- improved in its [51]history section.
- * The documentation of the chtype, cchar_t types and the attribute
- values which can be stored in those types, in particular the
- [52]history and [53]portability sections of the attributes manual
- page, has been improved.
- * improve discussion of [54]portability in the mouse manual.
- * The pad manual page has a section on the [55]origin and
- portability of pads.
- * Differences between SVr4 and X/Open Curses soft-keys are discussed
- in a new section on [56]portability.
- * There are updated/improved notes on portability in the
- [57]resizeterm and [58]wresize manual pages.
+ 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.:
- * add note in the [59]addch manual about line-drawing when it
- depends upon UTF-8.
- * improve discussion of line-drawing characters in the [60]add_wch
- manual.
- * explain in [61]clear's manual page that it writes to the standard
- output.
- * improve description of [62]endwin.
- * improve discussion of field validation in the [63]form driver
- manual page.
- * clarify the use of wint_t vs wchar_t in [64]get_wstr manual page.
- * clarify in the [65]getch manual that the keypad mode affects an
- application's ability to read KEY_MOUSE codes, but does not affect
- KEY_RESIZE.
- trim some obsolete/incorrect wording about EINTR from the getch
- manual page
- improve manual pages for [66]getch and [67]get_wch to point out
- that they might return user-defined values which have no
- predefined names in <curses.h>
- * improve description of the -R option in the [68]infocmp manual
- page
- * clarify in the [69]resizeterm manual page how KEY_RESIZE is pushed
- onto the input stream.
- * document return value of [70]use_extended_names
- * document differences in [71]ESCDELAY versus AIX's implementation
- in the variables manual page.
- * The _nc_free_tinfo function is now documented in the
- [72]memory-leaks manual page, because it could be used in tack for
- memory-leak checking.
- * add a note to the [73]tic manual page about -W versus -f options.
- * improve terminfo manual description of [74]terminfo syntax.
- improve terminfo manual page discussion of [75]control- and
- graphics- characters.
- improve [76]color-handling section in terminfo manual page
- * clarify description in [77]tput manual page regarding support for
- termcap names
- update [78]tput manual page to reflect changes to manipulate
- terminal modes by sharing functions with tset.
- * clarify in manual pages that the optional verbose option level of
- [79]tic and [80]infocmp is available only when ncurses is
- configured for tracing.
- * improve manual page description of [81]tset/reset versus
- window-size.
- * improve description of [82]tgoto parameters
-
- There are new manual pages:
- * [83]user_caps documents the terminfo extensions used by ncurses.
- * [84]scr_dump documents the screen-dump format.
+ * 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:
- * Made minor fixes to manpage NAME/SYNOPSIS sections to consistently
- use rule that either all functions which are prototyped in
- SYNOPSIS are listed in the NAME section, or the manual-page name
- is the sole item listed in the NAME section. The latter is used to
- reduce clutter, e.g., for the top-level library manual pages as
- well as for certain feature-pages such as [85]SP-funcs and
- [86]threading.
- * improve manual pages for utilities with respect to POSIX versus
- X/Open Curses.
- * improve organization of the [87]attributes and [88]color manual
- pages.
+ 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
- * modify toe to not exit if unable to read a terminal description,
- e.g., if there is a permission problem.
- * correct 20100515 change for weak signals versus sigprocmask
- * work around Ada tool-breakage in Debian 9 and later by invoking
- gprconfig to specify the C compiler to be used by gnatmake, and
- conditionally suppressing Library_Options line for static
- libraries.
- * There were, as well, several bug-fixes to handle illegal input for
- tic. Because those did not correspond to useful terminal
- descriptions, most users are unaffected.
+ 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
- This release provides a new binary format for terminal descriptions
- that use extended numeric capabilities. Applications built with the
- wide-character ncursesw library can use these extended numbers.
- * This includes utilities such as tic and infocmp, because (as noted
- in [89]New features), the feature relies upon an extension to the
- low-level tinfo library.
- * A few software packagers use a configuration option of ncurses
- which allows the low-level tinfo library to be shared between the
- high-level ncurses and ncursesw libraries. This new feature was
- designed to work in that configuration as well.
-
- Other applications (i.e., using the 8-bit ncurses library) which read
- the extended terminal descriptions see those numeric capabilities set
- to the maximum value for a signed 16-bit number.
-
- Older versions of ncurses' tic accept out-of-range numeric
- capabilities, storing those as the maximum value for a signed 16-bit
- number. Other implementations of curses (mentioned in the discussion
- of [90]picsmap) give zero for these out-of-range capabilities.
+ 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
- These changes provide support for tack 1.08, released in [91]July
- 2017:
- * add --without-tack configure option to refine --with-progs
- configure option. Normally tack is built outside the ncurses tree,
- but a few packagers combine it during the build. If term_entry.h
- is installed, there is no advantage to in-tree builds.
- * adjust configure-script to define HAVE_CURSES_DATA_BOOLNAMES
- symbol needed for tack 1.08 when built in-tree. Rather than
- relying upon internal "_nc_" functions, tack now uses the boolean,
- number and string capability name-arrays provided by ncurses and
- SVr4 Unix curses. It still uses term_entry.h for the definitions
- of the extended capability arrays.
- * add dependency upon ncurses_cfg.h to tic's header-files; any
- program using tic-library will have to supply this file. Legacy
- tack versions supply this file; ongoing tack development has
- dropped the dependency upon tic-library and new releases will not
- be affected.
-
- Other changes to the configure-script and generated files include
- * add configure options to disable checks for form, menu and panel
- libraries so that ncurses-examples can be built with non-SVr4
- curses implementations.
- * add configure option --enable-opaque-curses for ncurses library
- and similar options for the other libraries.
- * add configure option --disable-wattr-macros for use in cases where
- one wants to use the same headers for ncurses5/ncurses6
- development, by suppressing the wattr* macros which differ due to
- the introduction of extended colors
- * modify configure macro for shared-library rules to use -Wl,-rpath
- rather than -rpath to work around a bug in scons
- * improve ncurses-examples' configure script to define as needed
- NCURSES_WIDECHAR for platforms where _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED does
- not work. Also modified the test program to ensure that if
- building with ncurses, that the cchar_t type is checked, since
- that is normally (since [92]20111030) ifdef'd depending on this
- test.
- * modify configure script to handle the case where tic-library is
- renamed, but the --with-debug option is used by itself without
- normal or shared libraries
- * modify editing script which generates resulting.map to work with
- the clang configuration on recent FreeBSD, which gives an error on
- an empty "local" section.
- * improve configure check for setting the WILDCARD_SYMS variable; on
- ppc64 the variable is in the Data section rather than Text.
- * correct result of configure option --without-fallbacks, which
- caused FALLBACK_LIST to be set to "no"
- * modify --with-pkg-config-libdir option to make it possible to
- install ".pc" files even if pkg-config is not found. Limit this
- change, to suppress the actual install if it is not overridden to
- a valid directory at install time.
- * disallow "no" as a possible value for --with-shlib-version option,
- overlooked in cleanup-changes for [93]20000708.
+ 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:
- * improve configure script's CF_CC_ENV_FLAGS macro to allow for
- compiler wrappers such as ccache. This change moves only the
- preprocessor, optimization and warning flags to CPPFLAGS and
- CFLAGS, leaving the residue in CC. That happens to work for gcc's
- various "model" options, but may require tuning for other
- compilers.
- * modify ncurses-examples' configure script to use pkg-config for
- the extra form/menu/panel libraries, to be more consistent with
- the handling of the curses/ncurses library.
- * add configuration checks to build with [94]NetBSD curses, which
- for example lacks [95]use_env.
- * change ncurses-examples to use attr_t vs chtype to follow X/Open
- documentation more closely since Solaris xpg4-curses uses
- different values for WA_xxx vs A_xxx that rely on attr_t being an
- unsigned short. Tru64 aka OSF1, HPUX, AIX did as ncurses does,
- equating the two sets.
- * modify several test programs to reflect that ncurses honors
- existing signal handlers in initscr, while other implementations
- do not.
- * add configure check for openpty to ncurses-examples' configure
- script, for ditto.
- * improve check for working poll function by using posix_openpt as a
- fallback in case there is no valid terminal on the standard input
- * modify ncurses-examples' configure script to check for pthread
- dependency of ncursest or ncursestw library when building the
- ncurses examples, e.g., in case weak symbols are used.
- * add checks in ncurses-examples' configure script for some
- functions neither in 4.3BSD curses, nor based on X/Open Curses:
- + modify a loop limit in firework.c to work around absense of
- limit checks in some libraries.
- + fill the last row of a window with "?" in firstlast if waddch
- does not return ERR on the lower-right corner.
- * build-fixes for the Portland Group (PGI) compilers
- + accept whitespace in sed expression for generating expanded.c
- + modify configure check that g++ compiler warnings are not
- used.
- + add configure check for -fPIC option needed for shared
- libraries.
- * modify configure script for clang as used on FreeBSD, to work
- around clang's differences in exit codes vs gcc.
- * fixes for configure/build using clang on OSX
- + do not redefine "inline" in ncurses_cfg.h; this was
- originally to solve a problem with gcc/g++, but is aggravated
- by clang's misuse of symbols to pretend it is gcc.
- + add braces to configure script to prevent unwanted addition
- of "-lstdc++" option to the CXXLIBS symbol.
- + improve/update test-program used for checking existence of
- stdc++ library.
- + if $CXXLIBS is set, the linkage test uses that in addition to
- $LIBS.
- * fixes for OS/2:
- + use button instead of kbuf[0] in EMX-specific part of
- lib_mouse.c
- + support building with libtool on OS/2
- + use stdc++ library with OS/2 kLIBC
- + clear configure script's cf_XOPEN_SOURCE for OS/2, to work
- with its header files
- * add "newer" baudrate symbols to the [96]baudrate function in the
- ncurses library as well as to a corresponding table in tset.
- * modify ncurses-examples savescreen to work with AIX and HPUX.
- * define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN for MinGW port, making builds faster.
- * add a configure check for wcwidth versus the ncurses line-drawing
- characters, to use in special-casing systems such as Solaris.
- Solaris, however, requires a special case that maps Unicode
- line-drawing characters into the acsc string for non-Unicode
- locales. Solaris also has a misconfigured wcwidth which marks all
- of the line drawing characters as double-width.
- * string-hacks (non-standard):
- + fix configure script to record when strlcat is found on
- OpenBSD.
- + add --enable-string-hacks option to ncurses-examples'
- configure script.
- + completed string-hacks for sprintf, etc., including the
- ncurses-examples programs.
- + make --enable-string-hacks option work with Debian by
- checking for the "bsd" library and its associated
- "<bsd/string.h>" header.
- * workaround for Debian's antique/unmaintained version of mawk:
- + see Debian #65617, which was fixed in mawk's upstream
- releases in [97]2009.
- + related fixes when building link_test.
+ * 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
types even when no terminfo tree or termcap file is accessible
(this may be useful for support of screen-oriented programs that
must run in single-user mode).
- * The [98]tic/[99]captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the
- ability to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and AT&T
- extension sets.
- * A BSD-like [100]tset utility is provided.
+ * The tic/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the ability to
+ translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and AT&T extension
+ sets.
+ * A BSD-like tset utility is provided.
* The ncurses library and utilities will automatically read terminfo
entries from $HOME/.terminfo if it exists, and compile to that
directory if it exists and the user has no write access to the
other entries in the same source file (as in System V) but also to
compiled entries in either the system terminfo directory or the
user's $HOME/.terminfo directory.
- * The table-of-entries utility [101]toe makes it easy for users to
- see exactly what terminal types are available on the system.
+ * The table-of-entries utility toe makes it easy for users to see
+ exactly what terminal types are available on the system.
* The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro entry point
have a corresponding function which may be linked (and will be
prototype-checked) if the macro definition is disabled with
#undef.
- * Extensive documentation is provided (see the [102]Additional
- Reading section of the [103]ncurses FAQ for online documentation).
+ * Extensive documentation is provided (see the Additional Reading
+ section of the ncurses FAQ for online documentation).
Applications using ncurses
The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs
(including a few games). These are available separately as
- [104]ncurses-examples
+ ncurses-examples
The ncurses library has been tested with a wide variety of
applications including:
aptitude
FrontEnd to Apt, the debian package manager
- [105]https://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude
+ https://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude
cdk
Curses Development Kit
- [106]https://invisible-island.net/cdk/
+ https://invisible-island.net/cdk/
ded
directory-editor
- [107]https://invisible-island.net/ded/
+ https://invisible-island.net/ded/
dialog
the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and the
basis for similar install/configure applications on many
systems.
- [108]https://invisible-island.net/dialog/
+ https://invisible-island.net/dialog/
lynx
the text WWW browser
- [109]https://lynx.invisible-island.net/
+ https://lynx.invisible-island.net/
mutt
mail utility
- [110]http://www.mutt.org/
+ http://www.mutt.org/
ncftp
file-transfer utility
- [111]https://www.ncftp.com/
+ https://www.ncftp.com/
nvi
New vi uses ncurses.
- [112]https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/vi
+ https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/vi
ranger
A console file manager with VI key bindings in Python.
- [113]https://ranger.github.io/
+ https://ranger.github.io/
tin
newsreader, supporting color, MIME
- [114]http://www.tin.org/
+ http://www.tin.org/
vifm
File manager with vi like keybindings
- [115]https://vifm.info/
+ https://vifm.info/
as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support alone:
minicom
terminal emulator for serial modem connections
- [116]https://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/
+ https://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/
mosh
a replacement for ssh.
- [117]https://mosh.mit.edu/
+ https://mosh.mit.edu/
tack
terminfo action checker
- [118]https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tack.html
+ https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tack.html
tmux
terminal multiplexor
- [119]https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki
+ https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki
vile
vi-like-emacs may be built to use the terminfo, termcap or
curses interfaces.
- [120]https://invisible-island.net/vile/
+ https://invisible-island.net/vile/
and finally, those which use only the termcap interface:
emacs
text editor
- [121]https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
+ https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
less
The most commonly used pager (a program that displays text
files).
- [122]http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/
+ http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/
screen
terminal multiplexor
- [123]https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
+ https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
vim
text editor
- [124]https://www.vim.org/
+ https://www.vim.org/
Development activities
Zeyd Ben-Halim started ncurses from a previous package pcurses,
written by Pavel Curtis. Eric S. Raymond continued development.
- Juergen Pfeifer wrote most of the form and menu libraries. Ongoing
- development work is done by [125]Thomas Dickey. Thomas Dickey also
- acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation, which holds
- the [126]copyright on ncurses.
+ Juergen Pfeifer wrote most of the form and menu libraries.
+
+ Ongoing development work is done by Thomas E. Dickey. Thomas E. Dickey
+ has acted as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation, which
+ holds a copyright on ncurses for releases 4.2 through 6.1. Following
+ the release of ncurses 6.1, effective as of release 6.2, copyright for
+ ncurses reverted to Thomas E. Dickey (see the ncurses FAQ for
+ additional information).
Contact the current maintainers at
- [127]bug-ncurses@gnu.org
+ bug-ncurses@gnu.org
To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to
- [128]bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org
+ bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org
containing the line:
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
+ Beta versions of ncurses are made available at
+
+ ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/current/ and
+ https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/current/ .
+
+ Patches to the current release are made available at
- [129]ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/ and
- [130]https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/ .
+ ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/6.1/ and
+ https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/6.1/ .
There is an archive of the mailing list here:
- [131]http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses (also
- [132]https)
+ http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses (also https)
Related resources
The release notes make scattered references to these pages, which may
be interesting by themselves:
- * [133]ncurses licensing
- * [134]Symbol versioning in ncurses
- * [135]Comments on ncurses versus slang (S-Lang)
- * [136]tack - terminfo action checker
- * [137]tctest - termcap library checker
- * [138]Terminal Database
+ * ncurses licensing
+ * Symbol versioning in ncurses
+ * Comments on ncurses versus slang (S-Lang)
+ * tack - terminfo action checker
+ * tctest - termcap library checker
+ * Terminal Database
Other resources
The distribution provides a newer version of the terminfo-format
- terminal description file once maintained by [139]Eric Raymond .
- Unlike the older version, the termcap and terminfo data are provided
- in the same file, which also provides several user-definable
- extensions beyond the X/Open specification.
+ terminal description file once maintained by Eric Raymond . Unlike the
+ older version, the termcap and terminfo data are provided in the same
+ file, which also provides several user-definable extensions beyond the
+ X/Open specification.
You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics not
- covered in the terminfo file at [140]Richard Shuford's archive .
-
- * [141]Overview
- * [142]Release Notes
- + [143]Library improvements
- o [144]New features
- o [145]Other improvements
- + [146]Program improvements
- o [147]Utilities
- o [148]Examples
- + [149]Terminal database
- + [150]Documentation
- + [151]Interesting bug-fixes
- + [152]Configuration changes
- o [153]Major changes
- o [154]Configuration options
- + [155]Portability
- * [156]Features of ncurses
- * [157]Applications using ncurses
- * [158]Development activities
- * [159]Related resources
- * [160]Other resources
-
-References
-
- 1. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/captoinfo.1m.html
- 2. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/clear.1.html
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- 8. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tset.1.html
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- 23. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tset.1.html#h3-reset---reinitialization
- 24. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/clear.1.html
- 25. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tctest.html#bsd42-ctl-question
- 26. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tctest.html#freebsd-ctl-question
- 27. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html
- 28. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/new_pair.3x.html#h3-alloc_pair
- 29. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/new_pair.3x.html#h3-find_pair
- 30. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/new_pair.3x.html#h3-free_pair
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- 32. https://invisible-island.net/dialog/
- 33. https://invisible-island.net/dialog/manpage/dialog.html#h3-Common-Options
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- 39. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#toc-_Open_B_S_D_consoles
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- 45. https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.log.html#xterm_272
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- 48. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/clear.1.html#h2-HISTORY
- 49. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/clear.1.html#h2-HISTORY
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- 51. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_attr.3x.html#h2-HISTORY
- 52. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_attr.3x.html#h2-HISTORY
- 53. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_attr.3x.html#h2-PORTABILITY
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- 55. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_pad.3x.html#h2-PORTABILITY
- 56. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_slk.3x.html#h2-PORTABILITY
- 57. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/resizeterm.3x.html#h2-PORTABILITY
- 58. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/wresize.3x.html#h2-PORTABILITY
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- 62. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_initscr.3x.html#h3-endwin
- 63. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/form_driver.3x.html
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- 68. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/infocmp.1m.html
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- 70. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_extend.3x#h2-RETURN-VALUE
- 71. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_variables.3x.html#h2-PORTABILITY
- 72. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_memleaks.3x.html
- 73. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tic.1m.html
- 74. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/terminfo.5.html#h3-Terminfo-Capabilities-Syntax
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- 76. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/terminfo.5.html#h3-Color-Handling
- 77. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tput.1.html#h2-PORTABILITY
- 78. https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tput.1.html#h3-Aliases
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+ covered in the terminfo file at Richard Shuford's archive . The
+ collection of computer manuals at bitsavers.org has also been useful.
+
+ * Overview
+ * Release Notes
+ + Library improvements
+ o New features
+ o Other improvements
+ + Program improvements
+ o Utilities
+ o Examples
+ + Terminal database
+ + Documentation
+ + Interesting bug-fixes
+ + Configuration changes
+ o Major changes
+ o Configuration options
+ + Portability
+ * Features of ncurses
+ * Applications using ncurses
+ * Development activities
+ * Related resources
+ * Other resources
projects / ncurses.git / blobdiff