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<HEAD>
-<TITLE>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</TITLE>
+<TITLE>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@ Pre-Release</TITLE>
<link rev=made href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Unix releases such as BSD/OS, freeBSD and netBSD to switch over to
ncurses.<P>
-The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It should port easily to
-any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!<P>
+The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux.
+It has been in use for some time with OpenBSD as the system curses library,
+and on FreeBSD and NetBSD as an external package.
+It should port easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX.
+It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!<P>
The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including a
terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), clear(1), tput(1), tset(1),
the GNU distribution site
<A HREF="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses</A>.
<br>It is also available at
-<A HREF="ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses">ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses</A>.
+<A HREF="ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses</A>.
<H1>Release Notes</H1>
-This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 and 5.1;
+This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 and 5.2;
very few applications will require recompilation, depending on the platform.
-These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.1 release.
+These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.2 release.
<p>
Interface changes:
<ul>
- <li>change type of <code>ospeed</code> variable back to
- <code>short</code> to match its use in legacy applications. It was
- altered after ncurses 4.2 to <code>speed_t</code> to repair a type
- mismatch which was introduced after 1.9.4 in 1995. The principal
- users of termcap continued to use <code>short</code>, which is
- not the same size.
- <p>
- <em>NOTE</em>: A few applications will have to be recompiled
- (about 1% of the programs in a typical Linux distribution,
- 10% of the programs that use ncurses). These are easy to
- identify with <code>nm</code> or <code>strings</code>.
-
- <li>remove a private function <code>_nc_can_clear_with()</code>, which
- was built with the configure --enable-expanded option but not used.
-
- <li>add several private functions (prefixed with "_nc_") for tracing
- <code>chtype</code> values in the debug library, and for better
- access and buffer limit checking.
-</ul>
-New features and improvements:
-<ul>
- <li>rewrote <code>tgoto()</code> to make it better support existing
- termcap applications which use hardcoded strings rather than obtain
- all of their information from the termcap file. If the string does
- not appear to be a terminfo string (i.e., does not refer to a "%p"
- parameter, or terminfo-style padding), and termcap support is configured, <code>tgoto()</code>
- will interpret it as termcap. Otherwise, as before, it will use
- <code>tparm()</code>.
-
- <li>to ensure that the <code>tgoto()</code> changes work properly,
- added checks to <code>tic</code> which report capabilities that do
- not reference the expected number of parameters.
-
- <li>new configure script options:
- <ul>
- <li>option <code>--disable-root-environ</code> adds runtime checks
- which tell ncurses to disregard $TERMINFO and similar environment
- variables if the current user is root, or running setuid/setgid.
-
- <li>option <code>--disable-assumed-color</code> allows you to use the
- pre-5.1 convention of default colors used for color-pair 0 to be
- configured (see assume_default_colors()).
-
- <li>implement configure script options that transform installed
- program names, e.g., <code>--program-prefix</code>, including the
- manpage names and cross references.
+ <li>change type for bool used in headers to <code>NCURSES_BOOL</code>,
+ which usually is the same as the compiler's definition for
+ <code>bool</code>.
- <li>option <code>--with-database</code> allows you to specify a
- different terminfo source-file to install. On OS/2 EMX, the
- default is misc/emx.src, otherwise misc/terminfo.src
+ <li>add all but two functions for X/Open curses wide-character support.
+ These are only available if the library is configured using the
+ <kbd>--enable-widec</kbd> option. Missing functions are
+ <ul>
+ <li>pecho_wchar()
+ <li>slk_wset()
+ </ul>
- <li>option <code>--with-default-terminfo-dir</code> allows you to
- specify the default terminfo database directory.
-
- <li>option <code>--with-libtool</code> allows you to build with
- <code>libtool</code>. <p> <em>NOTE</em>: <code>libtool</code>
- uses a different notation for numbering shared library versions
- from the existing ncurses configuration.
-
- <li>option <code>--with-manpage-tbl</code> causes the manpages to be
- preprocessed by tbl(1) prior to installation,
-
- <li>option <code>--without-curses-h</code> causes the installation
- process to install curses.h as ncurses.h and make appropriate
- changes to headers and manpages.
- </ul>
-
- <li>modified configure script options:
- <ul>
- <li>change symbol used by the <code>--install-prefix</code> configure
- option from <code>INSTALL_PREFIX</code> to <code>DESTDIR</code>
- (the latter has become common usage although the name is
- misleading).
-
- <li>modify <code>ld -rpath</code> options (e.g., Linux, and Solaris)
- to use an absolute pathname for the build tree's lib directory,
- avoiding confusion with directories relative to the current one
- with the installed programs.
-
- <li>modified <code>misc/run_tic.in</code> to use
- <code>tic -o</code>, to eliminate dependency on
- <code>$TERMINFO</code> variable for installs.
- </ul>
+ <li>add environment variable <code>$NCURSES_ASSUMED_COLORS</code> to
+ modify the <code>assume_default_colors()</code> extension.
- <li>terminfo database:
+</ul>
+New features and improvements:
+<ul>
+ <li>Improved support for termcap applications:
<ul>
- <li>updated xterm terminfo entries to match XFree86 xterm patch #146.
-
- <li>added amiga-vnc,
- Matrix Orbital, and
- QNX qansi to misc/terminfo.src.
+ <li>add logic to dump_entry.c to remove function-key definitions that do
+ not fit into the 1023-byte limit for generated termcaps. This makes
+ hds200 fit.
- <li>added os2 entry to misc/emx.src.
+ <li>modify tgetent() to check if exit_attribute_mode resets the alternate
+ character set, and if so, attempt to adjust the copy of the termcap
+ "me" string which it will return to eliminate that part. In
+ particular, 'screen' would lose track of line-drawing characters.
- <li>add S0 and E0 extensions to <code>screen</code>'s terminfo entry
- since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
- to <code>tgoto</code>, which would be misinterpreted by older
- versions of ncurses.
- </ul>
+ <li>add check/fix to comp_parse.c to suppress warning about missing acsc
+ string. This happens in configurations where raw termcap information
+ is processed; tic already does this and other checks.
- <li>improvements to program usability:
- <ul>
- <li>modify programs to use <code>curses_version()</code> string to
- report the version of ncurses with which they are compiled rather
- than the NCURSES_VERSION string. The function returns the patch
- level in addition to the major and minor version numbers.
+ <li>add tic -A option to suppress capabilities which are commented out
+ when translating to termcap.
- <li>modify <code>tput</code> program so it can be renamed or invoked via a link as
- 'reset' or 'init', producing the same effect as <code>tput reset</code> or <code>tput init</code>.
+ <li>modify logic in lib_baudrate.c for ospeed, for FreeBSD to make it
+ work properly for termcap applications (patch by Andrey A Chernov).
- <li>add error checking to infocmp's -v and -m options to ensure that
- the option value is indeed a number.
</ul>
- <li>improved performance:
- <ul>
- <li>replace a lookup table in lib_vidattr.c used to decode
- <code>no_color_video</code> with a logic expression which is faster.
- </ul>
+ <li>add a call to _nc_keypad() in keypad() to accommodate applications
+ such as nvi, which use curses for output but not for input (fixes
+ Debian #131263, cf: 20011215).
+ <li>correct logic for COLORFGBG environment variable: if rxvt is compiled
+ with xpm support, the variable has three fields, making it slightly
+ incompatible with itself. In either case, the background color is
+ the last field.
</ul>
Major bug fixes:
<ul>
- <li>correct <code>manlinks.sed</code> script introduced in ncurses 5.1
- to avoid using ERE "\+", which is not understood by standard versions
- of <code>sed</code>. This happens to work with GNU <code>sed</code>,
- but is not portable, and was the initial motivation for this release.
-
- <li>remove "hpux10.*" case from CF_SHARED_OPTS configure script macro.
- This differed from the "hpux*" case by using reversed symbolic
- links, which made the 5.1 version not match the configuration of
- 5.0 shared libraries.
-
- <li>guard against corrupt terminfo data:
- <ul>
- <li>modify <code>tparm()</code> to disallow arithmetic on strings,
- analyze the varargs list to read strings as strings and numbers as
- numbers.
-
- <li>modify <code>tparm()</code>'s internal function
- <code>spop()</code> to treat a null pointer as an empty string.
-
- <li>modify <code>parse_format()</code> in lib_tparm.c to ignore
- precision if it is longer than 10000.
-
- <li>rewrote limit checks in lib_mvcur.c using new functions
- <code>_nc_safe_strcat()</code>, etc. Made other related changes to
- check lengths used for <code>strcat()</code> and
- <code>strcpy()</code>.
- </ul>
-
- <li>corrections to screen optimization:
- <ul>
- <li>added special case in lib_vidattr.c to reset underline and
- standout for devices that have no sgr0 defined.
-
- <li>change handling of <code>non_dest_scroll_region</code> in
- tty_update.c to clear text after it is shifted in rather than before
- shifting out. Also correct row computation.
+ <li>rewrote limit-checks in wscrl() and associated _nc_scroll_window(),
+ to ensure that if the parameter of wscrl() is larger than the size of
+ the scrolling region, then the scrolling region will be cleared.
- <li>modify <code>rs2</code> capability in xterm-r6 and similar entries
- where cursor save/restore bracketed the sequence for resetting video
- attributes. The cursor restore would undo that.
- </ul>
-
- <li>UTF-8 support:
- <ul>
- <li>when checking LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables
- for UTF-8 locale, ignore those which are set to an empty value, as
- per SUSV2.
-
- <li>encode 0xFFFD in UTF-8 with 3 bytes, not 2.
-
- <li>modify <code>_nc_utf8_outch()</code> to avoid sign-extension when
- checking for out-of-range value.
- </ul>
-
- <li>other library fixes:
- <ul>
- <li>added checks for an empty <code>$HOME</code> environment
- variable, to avoid retrieving terminfo descriptions from
- <code>./.terminfo</code> .
-
- <li>change functions <code>_nc_parse_entry()</code> and
- <code>postprocess_termcap()</code> to avoid using
- <code>strtok()</code>, because it is non-reentrant.
-
- <li>initialize <code>fds[]</code> array to 0's in
- <code>_nc_timed_wait()</code>; apparently <code>poll()</code> only
- sets the <code>revents</code> members of that array when there is
- activity corresponding to the related file.
-
- <li>add a check for null pointer in <code>Make_Enum_Type()</code>.
-
- <li>fix a heap problem with the c++ binding.
+ <li>modify tset to restore original I/O modes if an error is encountered.
+ Also modify to use buffered stderr consistently rather than mixing
+ with write().
- <li>correct missing includes for <string.h> in several places,
- including the C++ binding. This is not noted by gcc unless we use
- the <code>-fno-builtin</code> option.
- </ul>
+ <li>move calls to def_shell_mode() and def_prog_mode() before loop with
+ callbacks in lib_set_term.c, since the c++ demo otherwise initialized
+ the tty modes before saving them.
- <li>several fixes for tic:
- <ul>
- <li>add a check for empty buffers returned by <code>fgets()</code> in
- comp_scan.c <code>next_char()</code> function, in case
- <code>tic</code> is run on a non-text file (fixes a core dump).
+ <li>modified wresize() to ensure that a failed realloc will not corrupt
+ the window structure, and to make subwindows fit within the resized
+ window.
- <li>modify <code>tic</code> to verify that its inputs are really files,
- in case someone tries to read a directory (or
- <code>/dev/zero</code>).
+ <li>altered resizeterm() to avoid having it fail when a child window
+ cannot be resized because it would be larger than its parent.
- <li>correct an uninitialized parameter to <code>open_tempfile()</code>
- in tic.c which made "tic -I" give an ambiguous error message about
- <code>tmpnam</code>.
+ <li>correct/improve logic to produce an exit status for errors in tput,
+ which did not exit with an error when told to put a string not in the
+ current terminfo entry.
- <li>correct logic in <code>adjust_cancels()</code>, which did not check
- both alternatives when reclassifying an extended name between
- boolean, number and string, causing an infinite loop in
- <code>tic</code>.
- </ul>
+ <li>modify behavior of can_clear_with() so that if an application is
+ running in a non-bce terminals with default colors enabled, it
+ returns true, allowing the user to select/paste text without picking
+ up extraneous trailing blanks.
- <li>using new checks in <code>tic</code> for parameter counts in
- capability strings, found/fixed several errors both in the
- terminfo database and in the include/Caps file.
- <ul>
- <li>modified several terminfo capability strings, including the
- definitions for setaf, setab, in include/Caps to indicate that the
- entries are parameterized. This information is used to tell which
- strings are translated when converting to termcap. This fixes a
- problem where the generated termcap would contain a spurious "%p1"
- for the terminfo "%p1%d".
-
- <li>correct parameter counts in include/Caps for dclk as well as some
- printer-specific capabilities: csnm, defc, scs, scsd, smgtp, smglp.
- </ul>
+ <li>add a check in relative_move() to guard against buffer overflow in
+ the overwrite logic.
- <li>various fixes for install scripts used to support configure
- <code>--srcdir</code> and <code>--with-install-prefix</code>.
+ <li>add some limit/pointer checks to -S option of tputs.
- <li>correct several mismatches between manpage filename and ".TH"
- directives, renaming dft_fgbg.3x to default_colors.3x and
- menu_attribs.3x to menu_attributes.3x.
+ <li>modify mvcur() to avoid emitting newline characters when nonl() mode
+ is set. Normally this is not a problem since the actual terminal
+ mode is set to suppress nl/crlf translations, however it is useful to
+ allow the caller to manipulate the terminal mode to avoid staircasing
+ effects after spawning a process which writes messages (for lynx
+ 2.8.4).
</ul>
Portability:
<ul>
<li>configure script:
<ul>
- <li>newer config.guess, config.sub, including changes to support OS/2
- EMX. The configure script for OS/2 EMX still relies on a patch
- since there is no (working) support for that platform in the main
- autoconf distribution.
+ <li>modify check in --disable-overwrite option so that it is used by
+ default unless the --prefix/$prefix value is not /usr, in attempt to
+ work around packagers who do not read the INSTALL notes.
- <li>make configure script checks on variables <code>$GCC</code> and
- <code>$GXX</code> consistently compare against 'yes' rather than
- test if they are nonnull, since either may be set to the
- corresponding name of the C or C++ compiler.
+ <li>correct a typo in configure --enable-colorfgbg option, and move it
+ to the experimental section (cf: 20011208).
- <li>change configure script to use AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM rather than
- AC_CANONICAL_HOST, which means that <code>configure --target</code>
- will set a default program-prefix.
+ <li>modify configure script to allow building with termcap only, or with
+ fallbacks only. In this case, we do not build tic and toe.
- <li>modify the check for big-core to force a couple of memory
- accesses, which may work as needed for older/less-capable machines
- (if not, there's still the explicit configure option).
+ <li>modify run_tic.sh to check if the build is a cross-compile. In that
+ case, do not use the build's tic to install the terminfo database.
- <li>modify configure test for <code>tcgetattr()</code> to allow for
- old implementations, e.g., on BeOS, which only defined it as a
- macro.
+ <li>modify c++/Makefile.in to accommodate archive programs that are
+ different for C++ than for C, and add cases for vendor's C++
+ compilers on Solaris and IRIX.
- <li>add configure check for filesystems (such as OS/2 EMX) which do
- not distinguish between upper/lowercase filenames, use this to fix
- tags rules in makefiles.
+ <li>add several configure script options to aid with cross-compiling:
+ --with-build-cc, --with-build-cflags, --with-build-ldflags, and
+ --with-build-libs.
- <li>add MKncurses_def.sh to generate fallback definitions for
- ncurses_cfg.h, to quiet gcc -Wundef warnings, modified ifdef's in
- code to consistently use "#if" rather than "#ifdef".
+ <li>add experimental --with-caps=XXX option to customize to similar
+ terminfo database formats such as AIX 4.x
- <li>change most remaining unquoted parameters of <code>test</code> in
- configure script to use quotes, for instance fixing a problem in the
- <code>--disable-database</code> option.
-
- <li>modify scripts so that "make install.data" works on OS/2 EMX.
-
- <li>modify scripts and makefiles so the Ada95 directory builds on
- OS/2 EMX.
- </ul>
+ <li>add configure option --with-ospeed to assist packagers in transition
+ to 5.3 change to ospeed type.
+ </ul>
<li>library:
<ul>
- <li>replaced case-statement in <code>_nc_tracebits()</code> for CSIZE
- with a table to simplify working around implementations that define
- random combinations of the related macros to zero.
+ <li>implement a simple vsscanf() fallback function which uses the %n
+ conversion to help parse the input data.
- <li>improved OS/2 mouse support by retrying as a 2-button mouse if code
- fails to set up a 3-button mouse.
+ <li>various fixes to build/work with different implementations of
+ vsscanf().
- <li>added private entrypoint <code>_nc_basename()</code>, used to
- consolidate related code in progs, as well as accommodating OS/2 EMX
- pathnames.
+ <li>add/use macro to suppress sign-extension of char type on
+ platforms where this is a problem in ctype macros, e.g., Solaris.
- <li>alter definition of NCURSES_CONST to make it non-empty.
+ <li>finish changes needed to build dll's on cygwin.
- <li>redefine 'TEXT' in menu.h for AMIGA, since it is reported to have
- an (unspecified) symbol conflict.
+ <li>add #undef's before possible redefinition of ERR and OK in curses.h
</ul>
<li>programs:
<ul>
- <li>modified progs/tset.c and tack/sysdep.c to build with sgttyb
- interface if neither termio or termios is available. Tested this
- with FreeBSD 2.1.5 (which does have termios - but the sgttyb does
- work).
- </ul>
+ <li>modify ifdef's in write_entry.c to allow use of symbolic links on
+ platforms with no hard links, e.g., BeOS.
+
+ <li>modify _nc_write_entry() to allow for the possibility that linking
+ aliases on a filesystem that ignores case would not succeed because
+ the source and destination differ only by case, e.g., NCR260VT300WPP0
+ on cygwin.
+ <li>modify logic in tic, toe, tput and tset which checks for basename of
+ argv[0] to work properly on systems such as OS/2 which have
+ case-independent filenames and/or program suffixes, e.g., ".ext".
+ </ul>
</ul>
<H1>Features of Ncurses</H1>
<DT> cdk
<DD> Curses Development Kit
<br>
-<A HREF="http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html">http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html</a>
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/cdk/cdk.html">http://invisible-island.net/cdk</A>.
<br>
-<A HREF="http://dickey.his.com/cdk/cdk.html">http://dickey.his.com/cdk</A>.
+<A HREF="http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html">http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html</a>
<DT> ded
<DD> directory-editor
<br>
-<A HREF="http://dickey.his.com/ded/ded.html">http://dickey.his.com/ded</A>.
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/ded/ded.html">http://invisible-island.net/ded</A>.
<DT> dialog
<DD> the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and the basis
for similar applications on GNU/Linux.
<br>
-<A HREF="http://dickey.his.com/dialog/dialog.html">http://dickey.his.com/dialog</A>.
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/dialog/dialog.html">http://invisible-island.net/dialog</A>.
<DT> lynx
<DD> the character-screen WWW browser
<br>
<A HREF="http://lynx.isc.org/release/">http://lynx.isc.org/release</A>.
-<DT> Midnight Commander 4.1
+<DT> Midnight Commander
<DD> file manager
<br>
<A HREF="www.gnome.org/mc/">www.gnome.org/mc/</A>.
<DT> vile
<DD> vi-like-emacs
<br>
-<A HREF="http://dickey.his.com/vile/vile.html">http://dickey.his.com/vile</A>.
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/vile/vile.html">http://invisible-island.net/vile</A>.
</DL>
<P>
Ongoing work is being done by
<A HREF="mailto:dickey@herndon4.his.com">Thomas Dickey</A>
and
-<A HREF="mailto:juergen.pfeifer@gmx.net">Jürgen Pfeifer</A>.
+<A HREF="http://www.familiepfeifer.de/Contact.aspx?Lang=en">Jürgen Pfeifer</A>.
<A HREF="mailto:dickey@herndon4.his.com">Thomas Dickey</A>
acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation, which holds the
copyright on ncurses.
testing of this package.<P>
Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release are made available at
-<A HREF="ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses">ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses</A>.
+<A HREF="ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses</A>.
<H2>Future Plans</H2>
<UL>
projects / ncurses.git / blobdiff