<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 3.0//EN">
<!--
- $Id: announce.html.in,v 1.44 2002/10/12 23:35:32 tom Exp $
+ $Id: announce.html.in,v 1.57 2005/10/01 22:07:23 tom Exp $
-->
<HTML>
<HEAD>
-<TITLE>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@ Pre-Release</TITLE>
+<TITLE>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</TITLE>
<link rev=made href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
and has all the other SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD curses.<P>
In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared that he
-considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and is encouraging the keepers of
-Unix releases such as BSD/OS, freeBSD and netBSD to switch over to
+considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the keepers of
+Unix releases such as BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to switch over to
ncurses.<P>
The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux.
The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at
the GNU distribution site
-<A HREF="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses</A>.
+<A HREF="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/</A> .
<br>It is also available at
-<A HREF="ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses">ftp://invisible-island.net/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 5.2;
+This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 through 5.4;
very few applications will require recompilation, depending on the platform.
-These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.2 release.
+These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.4 release.
<p>
Interface changes:
<ul>
- <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>terminfo installs "xterm-new" as "xterm" entry rather than
+ "xterm-old" (aka xterm-r6).
- <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>terminfo data is installed using the tic -x option (few systems
+ still use ncurses 4.2).
- <li>add environment variable <code>$NCURSES_ASSUMED_COLORS</code> to
- modify the <code>assume_default_colors()</code> extension.
+ <li>modify C++ binding to work with newer C++ compilers by providing
+ initializers and using modern casts. Old-style header names are
+ still used in this release to allow compiling with not-so-old
+ compilers.
+
+ <li>modify parameter type in c++ binding for insch() and mvwinsch() to
+ be consistent with underlying ncurses library (was char, is chtype).
+
+ <li>change NCursesWindow::err_handler() to a virtual function.
+
+ <li>form and menu libraries now work with wide-character data.
+ Applications which bypassed the form library and manipulated the
+ FIELD.buf data directly will not work properly with libformw,
+ since that no longer points to an array of char. The
+ set_field_buffer() and field_buffer() functions translate to/from
+ the actual field data.
+
+
+ <li>add symbol to curses.h which can be used to suppress include of
+ stdbool.h, e.g.,
+ <pre>
+ #define NCURSES_ENABLE_STDBOOL_H 0
+ #include <curses.h>
+ </pre>
+
+ <li>change SP->_current_attr to a pointer, adjust ifdef's to ensure
+ that libtinfo.so and libtinfow.so have the same ABI. The reason
+ for this is that the corresponding data which belongs to the
+ upper-level ncurses library has a different size in each model.
+
+ <li>winnstr() now returns multibyte character strings for the
+ wide-character configuration.
+
+ <li>assume_default_colors() no longer requires that
+ use_default_colors() be called first.
+
+ <li>data_ahead() now works with wide-characters.
+
+ <li>slk_set() and slk_wset() now accept and store multibyte or
+ multicolumn characters.
+
+ <li>start_color() now returns OK if colors have
+ already been started.
+ start_color() also returns ERR if it cannot allocate memory.
+
+ <li>pair_content() now returns -1 for consistency with init_pair()
+ if it corresponds to the default-color.
+
+ <li>unctrl() now returns null if its parameter does not correspond
+ to an unsigned char.
</ul>
New features and improvements:
<ul>
- <li>Improved support for termcap applications:
- <ul>
- <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>library
+ <ul>
+ <li>environment variable NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS supports
+ miscellaneous terminal emulators which ignore alternate
+ character set escape sequences when in UTF-8 mode.
- <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>modify initialization of key lookup table so that if an extended
+ capability (tic -x) string is defined, and its name begins with 'k',
+ ncurses will automatically treat it as a key.
- <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>change GPM initialization, using dl library to load it
+ dynamically at runtime.
- <li>add tic -A option to suppress capabilities which are commented out
- when translating to termcap.
+ <li>form, menu and panel libraries support debug-tracing.
- <li>modify logic in lib_baudrate.c for ospeed, for FreeBSD to make it
- work properly for termcap applications (patch by Andrey A Chernov).
+ </ul>
- </ul>
+ <li>add NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html by Pradeep Padala
+ (see http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/).
- <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>programs:
- <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>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>infocmp:
+ <ul>
+ <li>The -i option now matches 8-bit controls against its table
+ entries, e.g., so it can analyze the xterm-8bit entry.
- <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>add "-x" option to infocmp like tic's "-x", for use in "-F"
+ comparisons. This modifies infocmp to only report extended
+ capabilities if the -x option is given, making this more
+ consistent with tic. Some scripts may break, since infocmp
+ previous gave this information without an option.
- <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.
+ </ul>
- <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>tic:
- <li>altered resizeterm() to avoid having it fail when a child window
- cannot be resized because it would be larger than its parent.
+ <ul>
- <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>modify termcap-parsing to retain 2-character aliases at the
+ beginning of an entry if the "-x" option is used in tic.
- <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>filter out long extended names when translating to termcap
+ format. Only two characters are permissible for termcap
+ capability names.
- <li>add a check in relative_move() to guard against buffer overflow in
- the overwrite logic.
+ <li>correct translation of "%%" in terminfo format to termcap,
+ e.g., using "tic -C".
- <li>add some limit/pointer checks to -S option of tputs.
+ <li>modify the "-c -v" options to ignore delays when comparing
+ strings. Also modify it to ignore a canceled sgr string,
+ e.g., for terminals which cannot properly combine attributes
+ in one control sequence.
- <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>
+ <li>add a check for improperly ended strings, i.e., where a
+ following line begins in column 1.
-Portability:
-<ul>
- <li>configure script:
- <ul>
- <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>add a check in tic for terminfo entries having an sgr0 but no
+ sgr string. This confuses Tru64 and HPUX curses when combined
+ with color, e.g., making them leave line-drawing characters in
+ odd places.
- <li>correct a typo in configure --enable-colorfgbg option, and move it
- to the experimental section (cf: 20011208).
+ <li>add check (with debug configuration) that provides about the
+ runtime changes that would be made to sgr0 for termcap
+ applications.
- <li>modify configure script to allow building with termcap only, or with
- fallbacks only. In this case, we do not build tic and toe.
+ </ul>
- <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>tset:
- <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.
+ <ul>
- <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 -c and -w options to allow user to suppress ncurses'
+ resizing of the terminal emulator window in the special case
+ where it is not able to detect the true size.
- <li>add experimental --with-caps=XXX option to customize to similar
- terminfo database formats such as AIX 4.x
+ </ul>
+
+</ul>
+Major bug fixes:
+<ul>
- <li>add configure option --with-ospeed to assist packagers in transition
- to 5.3 change to ospeed type.
- </ul>
+ <li>improve logic in tgetent() which adjusts the termcap "me" string
+ to work with ISO-2022 string used in xterm-new.
+ This is a feature that was incompletely implemented in ncurses 5.3.
+ ncurses attempts to provide termcap clients with the portion of
+ the sgr0 (termcap "me") string that does not reset line-drawing.
- <li>library:
- <ul>
- <li>implement a simple vsscanf() fallback function which uses the %n
- conversion to help parse the input data.
+ <li>cells in the WINDOW which are continuations of a multicolumn
+ character are encoded differently, making repainting more
+ reliable.
- <li>various fixes to build/work with different implementations of
- vsscanf().
+ <li>amend change to setupterm() in ncurses 5.4 (20030405) which would
+ reuse the value of cur_term if the same output was selected. This
+ now reuses it only when setupterm() is called from tgetent(),
+ which has no notion of separate SCREENs. Note that tgetent() must
+ be called after initscr() or newterm() to use this feature.
- <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>make setcchar() now works when its wchar_t* parameter is
+ pointing to a string which contains more data than can be converted.
- <li>finish changes needed to build dll's on cygwin.
+ <li>win_wchnstr() now works for more than one cell.
- <li>add #undef's before possible redefinition of ERR and OK in curses.h
- </ul>
+ <li>resizeterm() now processes all levels of window hierarchy.
- <li>programs:
- <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>disable GPM mouse support when $TERM happens to be prefixed with
+ "xterm". Gpm_Open() would otherwise assert that it can deal with
+ mouse events in this case.
- <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>add SP->_screen_acs_map[], used to ensure that mapping of missing
+ line-drawing characters is handled properly. For example, ACS_DARROW
+ is absent from xterm-new, and it was coincidentally displayed the
+ same as ACS_BTEE.
- <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>
+
+Portability:
+<ul>
+ <li>configure script:
+ <ul>
+ <li>new options:
+ <dl>
+ <dt>--enable-largefile
+ <dd>set compiler and linker flags to use largefile support.
+
+ <dt>--enable-ext-colors
+ <dd>Allow encoding of 256 foreground
+ and background colors, e.g., with the xterm-256color or
+ xterm-88color terminfo entries.
+ This requires ABI 6 because it changes the size of cchar_t.
+
+ <dt>--enable-ext-mouse
+ <dd>This defines NCURSES_MOUSE_VERSION 2, and modifies the encoding of
+ mouse events to support wheel mice, which may transmit buttons
+ 4 and 5. This works with xterm and similar terminal
+ emulators.
+ This requires ABI 6 because it changes the encoding of
+ mouse events.
+
+ <dt>--with-chtype
+ <dd>overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of chtype
+
+ <dt>--with-mmask-t
+ <dd>overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of mmask_t
+
+ <dt>--without-xterm-new
+ <dd>Installs "xterm-old" as the "xterm" entry of the terminfo
+ database.
+
+ </dl>
+
+ <li>The --with-termlib option now accepts a value which sets
+ the name of the terminfo library. This would allow a packager to
+ build libtinfow.so renamed to coincide with libtinfo.so
+
+ <li>fixes/improvements for cross-compiling:
+
+ <ul>
+ <li>suppress $suffix in misc/run_tic.sh when cross-compiling.
+ This allows cross-compiles to use the host's tic program to
+ handle the "make install.data" step.
+
+ <li>correct BUILD_CPPFLAGS substitution in ncurses/Makefile.in, to allow
+ cross-compiling from a separate directory tree.
+
+ </ul>
+
+ </ul>
+
+ <li>library:
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>add ifdef's for _LP64 in curses.h to avoid using wasteful
+ 64-bits for chtype and mmask_t, but add configure option
+ --disable-lp64 in case anyone used that configuration.
+
+ <li>modify C++ binding to use some C internal functions to make it
+ compile properly on Solaris (and other platforms).
+
+ <li>remove check in newwin() that prevents allocating windows that
+ extend beyond the screen (Solaris does this).
+
+ <li>check for <code>nl_langinfo(CODESET)</code>, use it if available.
+ This replaces ad hoc tests of environment variables to
+ check if the terminal is setup for UTF-8 encoding.
+ Applications which do not call <code>setlocale()</code>
+ should be corrected, to make them work properly with
+ UTF-8 encoding.
+ <br>
+ <strong>In particular, applications which assume (and
+ do not call <code>setlocale()</code>) that
+ Latin-1 codes are printable will no longer work in
+ a UTF-8 locale since the ad hoc check of environment
+ variables to see if the locale was UTF-8 is not used
+ when <code>nl_langinfo(CODESET)</code> is available.</strong>
+
+ <li>use setlocale() to query the program's current locale rather
+ than using getenv(). This supports applications which rely
+ upon legacy treatment of 8-bit characters when the locale is
+ not initialized.
+
+ </ul>
</ul>
<H1>Features of Ncurses</H1>
<DT> cdk
<DD> Curses Development Kit
<br>
-<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/cdk/cdk.html">http://invisible-island.net/cdk</A>.
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/cdk/">http://invisible-island.net/cdk/</A>
<br>
-<A HREF="http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html">http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html</a>
+<A HREF="http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/">http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/</a>
<DT> ded
<DD> directory-editor
<br>
-<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/ded/ded.html">http://invisible-island.net/ded</A>.
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/ded/">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://invisible-island.net/dialog/dialog.html">http://invisible-island.net/dialog</A>.
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/dialog/">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>.
+<A HREF="http://lynx.isc.org/release/">http://lynx.isc.org/release/</A>
<DT> Midnight Commander
<DD> file manager
<br>
-<A HREF="www.gnome.org/mc/">www.gnome.org/mc/</A>.
+<A HREF="http://www.ibiblio.org/mc/">http://www.ibiblio.org/mc/</A>
<DT> mutt
<DD> mail utility
<br>
-<A HREF="http://www.mutt.org">http://www.mutt.org</A>.
+<A HREF="http://www.mutt.org/">http://www.mutt.org/</A>
<DT> ncftp
<DD> file-transfer utility
<br>
-<A HREF="http://www.ncftp.com">http://www.ncftp.com</A>.
+<A HREF="http://www.ncftp.com/">http://www.ncftp.com/</A>
<DT> nvi
<DD> New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7 and later.
<br>
-<A HREF="http://www.bostic.com/vi/">http://www.bostic.com/vi/</A>.
+<A HREF="http://www.bostic.com/vi/">http://www.bostic.com/vi/</A>
+<br>
+<DT> pinfo
+<DD> Lynx-like info browser.
+<A HREF="http://dione.ids.pl/~pborys/software/pinfo/">http://dione.ids.pl/~pborys/software/pinfo/</A>
<DT> tin
<DD> newsreader, supporting color, MIME
-<br>
-<A HREF="http://www.tin.org">http://www.tin.org</A>.
-<DT> taper
-<DD> tape archive utility
-<br>
-<A HREF="http://members.iinet.net.au/~yusuf/taper/">http://members.iinet.net.au/~yusuf/taper/</A>.
+<A HREF="http://www.tin.org/">http://www.tin.org/</A>
<DT> vh-1.6
<DD> Volks-Hypertext browser for the Jargon File
<br>
-<A HREF="http://www.bg.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html">http://www.bg.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html</A>.
+<A HREF="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html">http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html</A>
</DL>
as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support alone:
<DL>
<DT> minicom
<DD> terminal emulator
<br>
-<A HREF="http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~walker/minicom.html">http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~walker/minicom.html</A>.
+<A HREF="http://www.netsonic.fi/~walker/minicom.html">http://www.netsonic.fi/~walker/minicom.html</A>
<DT> vile
<DD> vi-like-emacs
<br>
-<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/vile/vile.html">http://invisible-island.net/vile</A>.
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/vile/">http://invisible-island.net/vile/</A>
</DL>
<P>
<H2>Who's Who and What's What</H2>
-The original developers of ncurses are <A
-HREF="mailto:zmbenhal@netcom.com">Zeyd Ben-Halim</A> and
-<A HREF="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html">Eric S. Raymond</A>.
+Zeyd Ben-Halim
+started it from a previous package pcurses, written by Pavel Curtis.
+Eric S. Raymond
+continued development.
+Jürgen Pfeifer wrote most of the form and menu libraries.
Ongoing work is being done by
-<A HREF="mailto:dickey@herndon4.his.com">Thomas Dickey</A>
-and
-<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.
+<A HREF="mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net">Thomas Dickey</A>.
+Thomas Dickey
+acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation,
+which holds the copyright on ncurses.
Contact the current maintainers at
<A HREF="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">bug-ncurses@gnu.org</A>.
<P>
testing of this package.<P>
Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release are made available at
-<A HREF="ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses</A>.
+<A HREF="ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</A> .
<H2>Future Plans</H2>
<UL>
<H2>Other Related Resources</H2>
-The distribution includes and uses a version of the terminfo-format
-terminal description file maintained by Eric Raymond.
-<A HREF="http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo">http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo</A>.<P>
+The distribution provides a newer version of the terminfo-format
+terminal description file maintained by
+<A HREF="http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/">Eric Raymond</A> .
+Unlike the older version, the termcap and terminfo data are provided
+in the same file.<P>
You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics
not covered in the terminfo file at
<A HREF="http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal_index.html">Richard Shuford's
-archive</A>.
+archive</A> .
</BODY>
</HTML>
<!--