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<title>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</title>
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<h1 class="no-header">Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</h1>
<h2><a name="h2-overview" id="h2-overview">Overview</a></h2>
- <p>The <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> (new curses) library
- is a free software emulation of curses in System V Release 4.0
- (SVr4), and more. It uses terminfo format, supports pads and
- color and multiple highlights and forms characters and
+ <p>The <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> (new curses)
+ library is a free software emulation of curses in System V
+ Release 4.0 (SVr4), and more. It uses terminfo format, supports
+ pads and color and multiple highlights and forms characters and
function-key mapping, and has all the other SVr4-curses
- enhancements over BSD curses. SVr4 curses is better known today
- as X/Open Curses.</p>
+ enhancements over BSD curses. SVr4 curses became the basis of
+ X/Open Curses.</p>
<p>In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared
that he considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the
- keepers of <em class="small-caps">unix</em> releases such as
- BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to switch over to <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em>.</p>
+ keepers of <span class="main-name">unix</span> releases such as
+ BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to switch over to <span class=
+ "main-name">ncurses</span>.</p>
- <p>Since 1995, <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> has been
+ <p>Since 1995, <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> has been
ported to many systems:</p>
<ul>
(aside from some embedded applications).</li>
<li>It is used as the system curses library on OpenBSD, FreeBSD
- and OSX.</li>
+ and MacOS.</li>
<li>It is used in environments such as Cygwin and MinGW. The
first of these was EMX on OS/2 Warp.</li>
<li>It is used (though usually not as the <em>system</em>
- curses) on all of the vendor <em class="small-caps">unix</em>
- systems, e.g., AIX, HP-UX, IRIX64, SCO, Solaris, Tru64.</li>
+ curses) on all of the vendor <span class=
+ "main-name">unix</span> systems, e.g., AIX, HP-UX, IRIX64, SCO,
+ Solaris, Tru64.</li>
<li>It should work readily on any ANSI/POSIX-conforming
- <em class="small-caps">unix</em>.</li>
+ <span class="main-name">unix</span>.</li>
</ul>
<p>The distribution includes the library and support utilities,
including</p>
<ul>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/captoinfo.1m.html">captoinfo</a>,
- a termcap conversion tool</li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/captoinfo.1m.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">captoinfo</span></a>, a termcap conversion
+ tool</li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/clear.1.html">clear</a>,
- utility for clearing the screen</li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/clear.1.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">clear</span></a>, utility for clearing the
+ screen</li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/infocmp.1m.html">infocmp</a>,
- the terminfo decompiler</li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/infocmp.1m.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">infocmp</span></a>, the terminfo decompiler</li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tabs.1.html">tabs</a>,
- set tabs on a terminal</li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/tabs.1.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">tabs</span></a>, set tabs on a terminal</li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tic.1m.html">tic</a>,
- the terminfo compiler</li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/tic.1m.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">tic</span></a>, the terminfo compiler</li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/toe.1m.html">toe</a>,
- list (table of) terminfo entries</li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/toe.1m.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">toe</span></a>, list (table of) terminfo
+ entries</li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tput.1.html">tput</a>,
- utility for retrieving terminal capabilities in shell
- scripts</li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/tput.1.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">tput</span></a>, utility for retrieving terminal
+ capabilities in shell scripts</li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tset.1.html">tset</a>,
- to initialize the terminal</li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/tset.1.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">tset</span></a>, to initialize the terminal</li>
</ul>
<p>Full manual pages are provided for the library and tools.</p>
- <p>The <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> distribution is
- available via anonymous FTP at the GNU distribution site</p>
+ <p>The <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> distribution is
+ available at <span class="main-name">ncurses</span>' <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/">homepage</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href=
- "ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/</a> .</p>
- </blockquote>It is also available at
+ "ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a>
+ or<br>
+ <a href=
+ "https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/">https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/</a> .</p>
+ </blockquote>
+
+ <p>It is also available via anonymous FTP at the GNU distribution
+ site</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href=
- "ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a> .</p>
+ "ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/</a> .</p>
</blockquote>
<h2><a name="h2-release-notes" id="h2-release-notes">Release
Notes</a></h2>
- <p>These notes are for <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em>
- @VERSION@, released <strong>August 8, 2015</strong>.</p>
+ <p>These notes are for <span class="main-name">ncurses</span>
+ @VERSION@, released <strong>October 21, 2021</strong>.</p>
<p>This release is designed to be source-compatible with
- <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> 5.0 through 5.9; providing a
- new application binary interface (ABI). Although the source can
- still be configured to support the <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em> 5 ABI, the intent of the release is to
- provide extensions which are generally useful, but
- binary-incompatible with <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em>
- 5:</p>
+ <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> 5.0 through 6.2; providing
+ extensions to the application binary interface (ABI). Although
+ the source can still be configured to support the <span class=
+ "main-name">ncurses</span> 5 ABI, the reason for the release is
+ to reflect improvements to the <span class=
+ "main-name">ncurses</span> 6 ABI and the supporting utility
+ programs.</p>
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>Extend the <code>cchar_t</code> structure to allow more
- than 16 colors to be encoded.</p>
- </li>
+ <p>There are, of course, numerous other improvements, listed in
+ this announcement.</p>
- <li>
- <p>Modify the encoding of mouse state to make room for a 5th
- mouse button. That allows one to use <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em> with a wheel mouse with xterm or
- similar X terminal emulators.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <p>The most <a href="#h3-bug-fixes">important
+ bug-fixes/improvements</a> dealt with portability issues. The
+ release notes also mention some other bug-fixes, but are focused
+ on new features and improvements to existing features since
+ <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> 6.2 release.</p>
- <p>There are, of course, numerous other improvements,
- including</p>
+ <h3><a name="h3-library" id="h3-library">Library improvements</a></h3>
+
+ <h4><a name="h4-new-library" id="h4-new-library">New features</a></h4>
+
+ <p>There are a few new features:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>fixes made based on the Clang and Coverity static
- analyzers.</p>
+ <p>A new (experimental) driver, for the Windows Terminal
+ configuration is provided.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>memory leak fixes using Valgrind</p>
+ <p>A script is provided which enables <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses-openbsd.html">OpenBSD</a> users to
+ upgrade their system to use ncurses 6.3 (OpenBSD developers
+ are also invited to do this).</p>
</li>
</ul>
- <p>The release notes mention some bug-fixes, but are focused on
- new features and improvements to existing features log since
- <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> 5.9 release.</p>
-
- <p>While the intent of the release is to provide a new stable
- ABI, there are other development activities which are summarized
- below.</p>
+ <p>Additionally, to improve performance other changes (and
+ extensions) are provided in this release:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>The original release plan, e.g., for "5.10" was to improve
- the MinGW port. Ultimately that was completed (wide-character
- support, mouse, etc), but was deferred to focus on termcap
- support and performance issues. Also, pinpointing the
- problems with <code>Console2</code> took a while.</p>
+ <p>modify lib_mouse.c to check for out-of-range button
+ numbers, convert those to position reports.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>A review of termcap compatibility in 2011 led to several
- minor fixes in the library and improvements to utilities. To
- do this properly, a review of the various extent termcap
- implementations was needed.</p>
-
- <p>The <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tctest.html">termcap
- library checker (tctest)</a> (not part of <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em>) was one result. A followup review
- of performance using <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html">ncurses-examples</a>
- in 2014 led to additional improvements.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>Output buffering provided a further, but worthwhile
- distraction. A bug report in 2012 regarding the use of signal
- handlers in <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em>) pointed out
- <a href=
- "http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses/2012-07/msg00029.html">
- a problem</a> with the use of unsafe functions for handling
- <code>SIGTSTP</code>. Other signals could be addressed with
- workarounds; repairing <code>SIGTSTP</code> required a
- different approach. The solution required changing internal
- behavior of the library: how it handles output buffering.</p>
-
- <p>Now <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> buffers its own
- output, independently of the standard output. A few
- applications relied upon the library's direct reuse of the
- standard output buffering; however that is
- <em>unspecified</em> behavior and has never been a
- recommended practice. Identifying these applications as well
- as refining the change to permit low-level applications to
- work consistently took time.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>Since the introduction of the experimental support for 256
- colors early in <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t20050101">2005</a>
- (released in <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/announce-5.5.html">ncurses
- 5.5</a>), there has been increased user interest. Almost all
- packagers continue providing the ncurses ABI 5 which cannot
- support 256 colors.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>Symbol versioning, or the lack of it in ncurses, is the
- main reason why packagers would be reluctant to add a new
- ncurses ABI.</p>
-
- <p>This release provides the new ABI along with
- script-generated lists of versioned symbols which can be used
- for both ABI 5 and 6 (with distinct names to keep the two
- separate). This took time to development, as reported in
- <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-mapsyms.html">Symbol
- versioning in <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em></a>.</p>
+ <p>add sp-funcs for <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_termattrs.3x.html#h3-erasechar_-erasewchar">
+ erasewchar</a>, <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_termattrs.3x.html#h3-killchar_-killwchar">
+ killwchar</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
- <h3><a name="h3-library" id="h3-library">Library
- improvements</a></h3>
+ <h4><a name="h4-fixes-library" id="h4-fixes-library">Other
+ improvements</a></h4>
- <h3><a name="h3-lib-setbuf" id="h3-lib-setbuf">Output
- buffering</a></h3>
-
- <p>X/Open curses provides more than one initialization
- function:</p>
+ <p>These are revised features:</p>
<ul>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_initscr.3x.html#h3-initscr">
- initscr</a> (the simplest) accepts no parameters.</li>
-
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_initscr.3x.html#h3-newterm">
- newterm</a> accepts parameters for the stream input and
- output</li>
-
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_terminfo.3x.html#h3-Initialization">
- setupterm</a> (the low-level function) accepts a parameter for
- the <em>file descriptor</em> of the output.</li>
+ <li>modify wgetnstr, wgetn_wstr to improve compatibility with
+ SVr4 curses in its treatment of interrupt and quit
+ characters</li>
</ul>
- <p>They are documented in X/Open <em>as if</em>
- <code>initscr</code> calls <code>newterm</code> using
- <code>stdout</code> for output stream, and in turn
- <code>newterm</code> calls <code>setupterm</code> using
- <code>fileno(stdout)</code> for the file descriptor. As long as
- an implementation acts <em>as if</em> it does this, it conforms.
- In practice, implementations do what is implied. This creates a
- problem: the low-level <code>setupterm</code> function's file
- descriptor is unbuffered, while <code>newterm</code> implies
- buffered output. X/Open Curses says that all output is done
- through the file descriptor, and does not say how the output
- stream is actually used.</p>
-
- <p>Initially, <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> used the file
- descriptor (obtained from the output stream passed to
- <code>newterm</code>) for changing the terminal modes, and relied
- upon the output parameter of <code>newterm</code> for buffered
- output. Later (to avoid using unsafe buffered I/O in signal
- handlers), <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> was modified to
- use the file descriptor (unbuffered output) when cleaning up on
- receipt of a signal. Otherwise (when not handling a signal), it
- continued to use the buffered output.</p>
-
- <p>That approach worked reasonably well and as a side effect,
- using the same buffered output as an application might use for
- <code>printf</code> meant that no flushing was needed when
- switching between normal- and screen-modes.</p>
-
- <p>There were a couple of problems:</p>
+ <p>These were done to limit or ultimately deprecate features:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>to get good performance, curses (not only <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em>, but SVr4 curses in general) set an
- output buffer using <code>setbuf</code> or similar function.
- There is no standard (or portable) way to turn that output
- buffer off, and revert to line-buffering. The <code><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/ncurses.3x.html#h3-NCURSES_NO_SETBUF">
- NCURSES_NO_SETBUF</a></code> environment variable did make it
- optional.</p>
+ <p>mark wgetch-events feature as deprecated.</p>
+
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ <p>prevent <tt>KEY_EVENT</tt> from appearing in
+ <tt>curses.h</tt> unless the configure option
+ <code>--enable-wgetch-events</code> is used.</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li>
+ <p>modify <tt>MKkey_defs.sh</tt> to hide ncurses'
+ definition of <tt>KEY_EVENTS</tt> to reduce <em>Visual
+ Studio C++</em> redefinition warnings.</p>
+ </li>
+ </ul>
</li>
<li>
- <p>to handle <code>SIGTSTP</code> (the “stop”
- signal), <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> relied upon
- unsafe functions. That is, due to the complexity of the
- feature, it relied upon reusing existing functions which
- should not have been called via the signal handler.</p>
+ <p>reduce build-warnings by excluding ncurses-internals from
+ deprecation warnings.</p>
</li>
</ul>
- <p>Conveniently, solving the second problem (by making <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em> do its <em>own</em> output buffering)
- also fixed the first one. But there were special cases to
- resolve: <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_terminfo.3x.html"><em>
- low-level</em></a> functions such as mvcur, putp, vidattr
- explicitly use the standard output. Those functions were reused
- internally, and required modification to distinguish whether they
- were used by the high-level or low-level interfaces.</p>
-
- <p>Finally, there may still be a few programs which should be
- modified to improve their portability, e.g., adding an</p>
-
- <blockquote>
- <pre class="code-block">
-fflush(stdout);
-</pre>
- </blockquote>
-
- <p>when switching from “<a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_kernel.3x.html#h3-reset_prog_mode_-reset_shell_mode">shell</a>”
- mode to “<a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_kernel.3x.html#h3-reset_prog_mode_-reset_shell_mode">program</a>”
- (curses) mode. Those are fairly rare because most programmers
- have learned not to mix <code>printf</code> and <code><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_printw.3x.html">printw</a></code>.</p>
-
- <h3><a name="h3-lib-versioning" id="h3-lib-versioning">Symbol
- versioning</a></h3>
-
- <p>This release introduces symbol-versioning to <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em> because without it, the change of ABI
- would be less successful. A lengthy discussion will be presented
- in <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-mapsyms.html">Symbol
- versioning in <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em></a>. These
- notes summarize what has changed, and what can be done with the
- new release.</p>
-
- <p>Symbol-versioning allows the developers of a library to mark
- each public symbol (both data and functions) with an identifier
- denoting the library name and the version for which it was built.
- By doing this, users of the library have a way to help ensure
- that applications do not accidentally load an incompatible
- library. In addition, private symbols can be hidden entirely.</p>
-
- <p>This release provides sample files for the four principal
- configurations of <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> libraries:
- <code>ncurses</code>, <code>ncursesw</code>,
- <code>ncursest</code> and <code>ncursestw</code>. Each sample is
- given in two forms:</p>
-
- <blockquote>
- <dl>
- <dt>“<code>.map</code>”</dt>
-
- <dd>These list all public symbols, together with version
- names.</dd>
-
- <dt>“<code>.sym</code>”</dt>
-
- <dd>These list all public symbols, without version
- names.</dd>
- </dl>
- </blockquote>
-
- <p>The sample files are <em>generated</em> by scripts which take
- into account a few special cases such as <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tack.html">tack</a> to omit
- many of the <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> private symbols
- (beginning with “<code>_nc_</code>”). Here are
- counts of globals versus locals:</p>
-
- <blockquote>
- <table border="1" summary="Total global and local symbols">
- <tr>
- <th>Config</th>
-
- <th>Symbols</th>
-
- <th>Globals</th>
-
- <th>Locals</th>
-
- <th>"_nc_"</th>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td>ncurses</td>
-
- <td align="right">976</td>
-
- <td align="right">796</td>
-
- <td align="right">180</td>
-
- <td align="right">332</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td>ncursesw</td>
-
- <td align="right">1089</td>
-
- <td align="right">905</td>
-
- <td align="right">184</td>
-
- <td align="right">343</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td>ncursest</td>
-
- <td align="right">979</td>
-
- <td align="right">804</td>
-
- <td align="right">175</td>
-
- <td align="right">358</td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td>ncursestw</td>
-
- <td align="right">1098</td>
-
- <td align="right">914</td>
-
- <td align="right">184</td>
-
- <td align="right">372</td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- </blockquote>
-
- <p>Although only four sample configurations are presented, each
- is formed by merging symbols from several combinations of
- configure-script options, taking into account advice from
- downstream packagers. Because they are formed by merging, the
- sample files may list a symbol which is not in a given package.
- That is expected. The samples have been tested and are working
- with systems (such as Fedora, FreeBSD and Debian) which fully
- support this feature. There are other systems which do
- <em>not</em> support the feature, and a few (such as Solaris)
- which provide incomplete support.</p>
-
- <p>The version-naming convention used allows these sample files
- to build distinct libraries for ABI 5 and 6. Version names
- consist of</p>
+ <p>These are improvements to existing features:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>configuration name, e.g.,
- “<code>NCURSESW</code>” for the wide-character
- libraries</p>
+ <p>drop symbols <em>GCC_PRINTF</em> and <em>GCC_SCANF</em>
+ from <curses.h>, to simplify use.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>ABI version (if not 5)</p>
+ <p>apply gcc format attribute to prototypes which use a
+ va_list parameter rather than a “<tt>...</tt>”
+ variable-length parameter list.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>library name for two special cases which have the same
- interface across configurations:
- “<code>TINFO</code>” and
- “<code>TIC</code>”</p>
+ <p>modify <term.h> so that it is not necessary to
+ include <curses.h> before <term.h>.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>release version</p>
+ <p>provide for wide-characters as background character in
+ wbkgrnd</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>patch date (for the release version)</p>
+ <p>improve parameter-checking for tparm, adding function
+ _nc_tiparm() to handle the most-used case, which accepts only
+ numeric parameters.</p>
</li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>For example, running <code>nm -D</code> on the libraries in
- the ncurses6 test package shows these symbol-versions:</p>
-
- <blockquote>
- <pre class="code-block">
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TIC_5.0.19991023
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TIC_5.1.20000708
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TIC_5.5.20051010
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TIC_5.7.20081102
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TIC_5.9.20150530
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.0.19991023
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.1.20000708
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.2.20001021
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.3.20021019
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.4.20040208
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.5.20051010
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.6.20061217
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.7.20081102
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.8.20110226
-0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.9.20150530
-0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.1.20000708
-0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.3.20021019
-0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.4.20040208
-0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.5.20051010
-0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.6.20061217
-0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.7.20081102
-0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.8.20110226
-0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.9.20150530
-</pre>
- </blockquote>
-
- <p>As a special case, this release (which makes the final change
- for ABI 5) is marked with release version 5.9 and patch date
- 20150530.</p>
-
- <h3><a name="h3-lib-other" id=
- "h3-lib-other">Miscellaneous</a></h3>
-
- <p>The new release has several improvements for performance and
- building. For instance:</p>
- <ul>
<li>
- <p>several files in ncurses- and progs-directories were
- modified to allow <code>const</code> data used in internal
- tables to be put by the linker into the readonly text
- segment.</p>
+ <p>use return-value from <em>vsnprintf</em> to reallocate as
+ needed to allow for buffers larger than the screen size.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>various improvements were made to building the Ada95
- binding, both in simplifying the generated files as well as
- improving the way it uses <code>gnatmake</code></p>
+ <p>add another <em>fflush(stdout)</em> in <em>_nc_flush</em>
+ to handle time-delays in the middle of strings such as flash
+ when the application uses low-level calls rather than
+ curses.</p>
</li>
</ul>
- <p>There are also new features in the libraries:</p>
+ <p>These are corrections to existing features:</p>
<ul>
- <li>added <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_util.3x.html#h3-use_tioctl">
- use_tioctl</a> function</li>
-
<li>
- <p>added <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_opaque.3x.html">
- wgetdelay</a> to retrieve _delay member of WINDOW if it
- happens to be opaque, e.g., in the pthread configuration.</p>
+ <p>add a check to guard against <em>repeat_char</em> emitting
+ digits which could be interpreted as BSD-style padding when
+ <tt>--enable-bsdpad</tt> is configured.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>added <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_attr.3x.html#h2-PORTABILITY">
- A_ITALIC</a> extension.</p>
+ <p>check for screen size-change in <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_scr_dump.3x.html">scr_init</a> and
+ <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_scr_dump.3x.html">scr_restore</a>, in
+ case a screen dump does not match the current screen
+ dimensions</p>
</li>
+ </ul>
- <li>
- <p>added form library extension <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/form_field_opts.3x.html">
- O_DYNAMIC_JUSTIFY</a> option which can be used to override
- the different treatment of justification for static versus
- dynamic fields .</p>
- </li>
+ <h3><a name="h3-programs" id="h3-programs">Program
+ improvements</a></h3>
- <li>
- <p>rewrote <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_util.3x.html#h3-putwin_getwin">
- putwin</a> and <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_util.3x.html#h3-putwin_getwin">
- getwin</a>, making an extended version which is capable of
- reading screen-dumps between the wide/normal <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em> configurations. These are text
- files, except for a <em>magic</em> code at the beginning:</p>
+ <p id="h4-utilities">Several improvements were made to the
+ utility programs:</p>
- <blockquote>
- <pre class="code-block">
-0 string \210\210 Screen-dump (ncurses)
-</pre>
- </blockquote>
- </li>
+ <dl>
+ <dt><span class="part-name"><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/tabs.1.html">tabs</a></span>
+ </dt>
- <li>
- <p>several changes to mouse support include:</p>
+ <dd>
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ <p>implement “<tt>+m</tt>” option</p>
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+ </dd>
+
+ <dt><span class="part-name"><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/tic.1m.html">tic</a></span>
+ </dt>
+ <dd>
<ul>
- <li>added decoder for xterm SGR 1006 mouse mode.</li>
+ <li>
+ <p>add check for duplicate “<tt>use=</tt>”
+ clauses.</p>
+ </li>
- <li>added experimental support for
- “<code>%u</code>” format to terminfo.</li>
+ <li>
+ <p>add check to report instances where <tt>tparm</tt>
+ would detect an error in an expression.</p>
+ </li>
- <li>improved behavior of wheel-mice for xterm protocol:
- noting that there are only button-presses for buttons
- “4” and “5”, so there is no need to
- wait to combine events into double-clicks .</li>
- </ul>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <li>
+ <p>add user-defined capabilities from <em>mintty</em> to
+ <tt>Caps-ncurses</tt>, for checking consistency.</p>
+ </li>
- <p>There are a few new configure options dealing with library
- customization:</p>
+ <li>
+ <p>improve warning when oc/op do not mention SGR 39/49
+ for <em>xterm</em> compatible <code>XT</code> flag.</p>
+ </li>
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>add “<code>--enable-ext-putwin</code>”
- configure option to turn on the extended putwin/getwin. By
- default, this is enabled for ABI 6 and disabled with ABI
- 5.</p>
- </li>
+ <li>
+ <p>improve checks for number of parameters of
+ <code>smglp</code>, <code>smgrp</code>,
+ <code>smgtp</code>, and <code>smgbp</code>.</p>
+ </li>
- <li>
- <p>add “<code>--enable-string-hacks</code>”
- option to control whether strlcat and strlcpy may be used.
- Because <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> already does the
- requisite buffer-limit checks, this feature is mainly of
- interest to quiet compiler-warnings on a few systems.</p>
- </li>
+ <li>
+ <p>improve “<tt>-c</tt>” option to validate
+ the number and type of parameters and compare against
+ expected number/type before deciding which set of
+ parameter-lists to use in tparm calls.</p>
+ </li>
- <li>
- <p>add configure option
- “<code>--with-tparm-arg</code>” to allow <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_terminfo.3x.html#h3-Formatting-Output">
- tparm</a>'s parameters to be something more likely to be the
- same size as a pointer, e.g., <code>intptr_t</code> (again,
- the default is set for ABI 6).</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <li>
+ <p>improve check for errors detected in
+ <code>tparm</code>.</p>
+ </li>
- <h3><a name="h3-programs" id="h3-programs">Program
- improvements</a></h3>
+ <li>
+ <p>improve format of output, to ensure that the messages
+ contain only printable text.</p>
+ </li>
- <h4><a name="h4-utilities" id="h4-utilities">Utilities</a></h4>
-
- <p>Most of the termcap-related changes based on development of
- <a href="http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tctest.html">tctest
- (termcap library checker)</a> are implemented in the tic and
- infocmp programs rather than affecting the library. As noted in
- the <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tctest.html#my-better-translation">
- discussion</a> of <code>tctest</code>, <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em>'s ability to translate between terminfo
- and termcap formats has been improved at different times, but
- subject to feedback from "real" termcap users. There are very few
- of those. Nowadays, virtually all <em>termcap</em> users are
- using <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> (or NetBSD, with its
- own terminfo library) and their programs are actually using
- terminfo rather than termcap data.</p>
-
- <p>Still, there are a few. A comment about the translation of the
- ASCII <code>NUL</code> character prompted a review:</p>
+ <li>
+ <p>modify to eliminate unnecessary
+ “<code>\</code>” to escape
+ “<code>:</code>” in terminfo format.</p>
+ </li>
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>Both terminfo and termcap store string capabilities as
- <code>NUL</code>-terminated strings.</p>
- </li>
+ <li>
+ <p>remove check that assumes that none or both
+ parameterized and non-parameterized margin-setting
+ capabilities are present.</p>
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+ </dd>
- <li>
- <p>In terminfo, a <code>\0</code> in a terminal description
- is stored as <code>\200</code>.</p>
- </li>
+ <dt><span class="part-name"><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/toe.1m.html">toe</a></span>
+ </dt>
- <li>
- <p>There are no (known) terminals which would behave
- differently when sent <code>\0</code> or
- <code>\200</code>.</p>
- </li>
+ <dd>
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ <p>modify output of “<tt>toe -as</tt>” to
+ show first description found rather than the last.</p>
+ </li>
- <li>
- <p>When translating to terminfo format (or displaying a
- printable version of an entry using infocmp), <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em> shows <code>\200</code> as
- <code>\0</code>.</p>
- </li>
+ <li>
+ <p>add a check to ensure that a “termcap
+ file” is text rather than binary.</p>
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+ </dd>
- <li>
- <p>It has done this since 1998 (quoting from the NEWS
- file):</p>
+ <dt><span class="part-name"><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/tput.1.html">tput</a></span>
+ </dt>
- <blockquote>
- <pre class="code-block">
-<a href=
-"http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t980103">980103</a>
-...
- + modify _nc_tic_expand() to generate \0 rather than \200.
-...
- + correct translation of terminfo "^@", to \200, like \0.
-</pre>
- </blockquote>
- </li>
+ <dd>
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ <p>modify to allow multiple commands per line.</p>
+ </li>
- <li>
- <p>However, the <code>_nc_tic_expand</code> function (which
- optionally produces terminfo or termcap format) did not
- address this special case for termcap. Even the later 4.4BSD
- <a href=
- "https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/lib/libc/gen/getcap.c?revision=244092&view=markup#l784">
- cgetstr</a> interprets a <code>\0</code> literally, ending
- <em>that</em> string (rather than using the terminfo
- improvement).</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <li>
+ <p>improve parameter-checking by analyzing all extended
+ string capabilities, e.g., as used in the <code>Cs</code>
+ and <code>Ms</code> capabilities of the <em>tmux</em>
+ description.</p>
+ </li>
- <p>As a result of the review, several improvements were made to
- <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> translation to/from termcap
- format — and improving the checks made in tic for
- consistency of entries. Most of these are not of general
- interest, except for two new command-line options for tic and
- infocmp:</p>
+ <li>
+ <p>make warning messages consistently using alias names
+ when those are used, rather than the underlying program's
+ name.</p>
+ </li>
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>the “<code>-0</code>” option generates
- termcap/terminfo source on a single line.</p>
- </li>
+ <li>
+ <p>improve usage message for aliases such as
+ <em>clear</em>, by eliminating <em>tput</em>-specific
+ portions.</p>
+ </li>
- <li>
- <p>the “<code>-K</code>” option provides stricter
- BSD-compatibility for termcap output.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <li>
+ <p>modify initialization to avoid opening
+ <tt>/dev/tty</tt> for cases other than
+ <em>reset/init</em>, e.g., for <em>clear</em>.</p>
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+ </dd>
+ </dl>
- <p>Other user-visible improvements and new features include:</p>
+ <h4><a name="h4-examples" id="h4-examples">Examples</a></h4>
+
+ <p>Along with the library and utilities, improvements were made
+ to the <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses-examples.html">ncurses-examples</a>. 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
+ <em>tracemunch</em> script:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>added “<code>-D</code>” option to tic and
- infocmp, to show the database locations that it could
- use.</p>
+ <p>add “<tt>-r</tt>” option to the <em>dots</em>
+ test-programs, to help with scripting a performance
+ comparison.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>added “<code>-s</code>” option to toe, to sort
- its output.</p>
+ <p>build-fix for <em>test_opaque</em>, for configurations
+ without opaque curses structs, e.g., ncurses 5.7.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>extended “<code>-c</code>” and
- “<code>-n</code>” options of infocmp to allow
- comparing more than two entries.</p>
+ <p>improve <em>tracemunch</em> logic for "RUN"
+ compaction.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>modified toe's report when “<code>-a</code>”
- and “<code>-s</code>” options are combined, to
- add a column showing which entries belong to a given
- database.</p>
+ <p>improve <em>tracemunch</em>'s coverage of form/menu/panel
+ libraries.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>modified the clear program to take into account the
- “<code>E3</code>” extended capability to clear
- the terminal's scrollback buffer.</p>
+ <p>improve <em>tracemunch</em>'s checking/reporting the type
+ for the first parameter, e.g., "WINDOW*" rather than
+ "#1".</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li>
+ <p>modify <em>tracemunch</em> and the panel library to show
+ readable traces for panel- and user-pointers.</p>
</li>
</ul>
- <h4><a name="h4-examples" id="h4-examples">Examples</a></h4>
+ <p>There are other new demo/test programs and reusable
+ examples:</p>
- <p>Along with the library and utilities, many improvements were
- made to the <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html">ncurses-examples</a>.
- Some were made to allow building (and comparison-testing) against
- NetBSD curses and PDCurses. Both lack some of the X/Open Curses
- features, necessitating customization. But this activity was
- useful because it showed some remaining performance issues (which
- have been resolved in this release).</p>
+ <dl>
+ <dt><span class="part-name"><em>back_ground</em></span>
+ </dt>
- <p>These changes were made to verify compatibility or compare
- performance of <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em>:</p>
+ <dd>to exercise the wide-character background functions.</dd>
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>made workarounds for compiling test-programs with NetBSD
- curses, though it lacks some common functions such as
- <a href="http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_util.3x.html#h3-use_env">
- use_env</a>.</p>
- </li>
+ <dt><span class="part-name"><em>move_field</em></span>
+ </dt>
- <li>
- <p>added dots_termcap test-program</p>
- </li>
+ <dd>to demonstrate <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/form_field.3x.html">move_field</a>, and a stub
+ for a corresponding demo of <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/form_field_new.3x.html">dup_field</a>.</dd>
- <li>
- <p>added dots_curses test-program, for comparison with the
- low-level examples.</p>
- </li>
+ <dt><span class="part-name"><em>test_tparm</em></span>
+ </dt>
- <li>
- <p>added test_setupterm test-proram to demonstrate
- normal/error returns from the setupterm and restartterm
- functions.</p>
- </li>
+ <dd>for checking <em>tparm</em> changes.</dd>
+ </dl>
- <li>
- <p>added “<code>-d</code>”,
- “<code>-e</code>” and
- “<code>-q</code>” options to the demo_terminfo
- and demo_termcap test-programs.</p>
- </li>
+ <h3><a name="h3-database" id="h3-database">Terminal database</a></h3>
- <li>
- <p>added “<code>-y</code>” option to demo_termcap
- and test/demo_terminfo test-programs to demonstrate behavior
- with/without extended capabilities.</p>
- </li>
+ <p>There are several new terminal descriptions:</p>
- <li>
- <p>modified demo_termcap and demo_terminfo test-programs to
- make their options more directly comparable, and add
- “<code>-i</code>” option to specify a terminal
- description filename to parse for names to lookup.</p>
- </li>
+ <blockquote style="word-break:keep-all">
+ <p><tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-absolute">absolute</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-att610_cvis">att610+cvis</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-foot">foot</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-foot-direct">foot-direct</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-hp98550-color">hp98550-color</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-hpterm-color2">hpterm-color2</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-hterm">hterm</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-hterm-256color">hterm-256color</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-linux-s">linux-s</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-putty_keypad">putty+keypad</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-putty_screen">putty+screen</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-putty-screen">putty-screen</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-screen.linux-s">screen.linux-s</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-scrt/securecrt">scrt/securecrt</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-tmux-direct">tmux-direct</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt220_cvis">vt220+cvis</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt220_cvis8">vt220+cvis8</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt220_pcedit">vt220+pcedit</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt220_vtedit">vt220+vtedit</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt220-base">vt220-base</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt52_keypad">vt52+keypad</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm_256color2">xterm+256color2</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm_88color2">xterm+88color2</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm-direct16">xterm-direct16</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm-direct256">xterm-direct256</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm_nofkeys">xterm+nofkeys</a></tt>,
+ and <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm_nopcfkeys">xterm+nopcfkeys</a></tt>.</p>
+ </blockquote>
- <li>
- <p>rewrote the tests for <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_window.3x.html#h3-derwin">
- mvderwin</a> and test for recursive <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_window.3x.html#h3-mvwin">
- mvwin</a> in the movewindow test-program.</p>
- </li>
+ <p>There are many changes to existing terminal descriptions. Some
+ were updates to several descriptions:</p>
+
+ <ul>
+ <li>correct use-ordering in some <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm-direct">xterm-direct</a>
+ flavors</li>
+
+ <li>fix some sgr inconsistencies in <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-d230c">d230c</a>, <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-ibm6153">ibm6153</a>,
+ <a href="@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-ibm6154">ibm6154</a>,
+ <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-ncrvt100an">ncrvt100an</a></li>
+
+ <li>improve <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt50h">vt50h</a> and <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt52">vt52</a> based on
+ DECScope manual</li>
+
+ <li>use <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-hp_arrows">hp+arrows</a> in a
+ few places</li>
+
+ <li>use <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-hp_pfk-cr">hp+pfk-cr</a> in a
+ few places</li>
+
+ <li>use <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt220_cvis">vt220+cvis</a> in
+ <tt>st</tt>, <tt>terminology</tt>, <tt>termite</tt> since they
+ ignore blinking-cursor detail in <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-att610_cvis">att610+cvis</a></li>
</ul>
- <p>These changes were made to help with the MinGW port:</p>
+ <p>while others affected specific descriptions. These were
+ retested, to take into account changes by their developers:</p>
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>added test-screens to the ncurses test-program to show
- 256-characters at a time, to help with MinGW port.</p>
- </li>
+ <blockquote>
+ <p><tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-kitty_common">kitty+common</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-mlterm3">mlterm3</a></tt>,
+ <tt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-ms-terminal">ms-terminal</a></tt></p>
+ </blockquote>
- <li>
- <p>modified the view test-program to load UTF-8 when built
- with MinGW by using regular win32 API because the MinGW
- functions mblen and mbtowc do not work.</p>
- </li>
+ <p>while these are specific fixes based on reviewing
+ documentation, user reports, or warnings from <span class=
+ "part-name">tic</span>:</p>
- <li>
- <p>added “<code>-s</code>” option to the view
- test-program to allow it to start in single-step mode,
- reducing size of trace files when it is used for debugging
- MinGW changes.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <dl>
+ <dt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-aaa_dec">aaa+dec</a>,
+ aaa+rv</dt>
- <p>These changes were made to verify new extensions in <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em>:</p>
+ <dd>correct rmacs/smacs</dd>
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>added <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/form_driver.3x.html#h3-form_driver_w">
- form_driver_w</a> entrypoint to wide-character forms library,
- as well as form_driver_w test-program.</p>
- </li>
+ <dt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-aaa_rv">aaa+rv</a>
+ </dt>
- <li>
- <p>modified ncurses test-program's b/B tests to display lines
- only for the attributes which a given terminal supports, to
- make room for an italics test.</p>
- </li>
+ <dd>correct sgr</dd>
- <li>
- <p>modified ncurses test-program, adding
- “<code>-E</code>” and
- “<code>-T</code>” options to demonstrate use_env
- versus use_tioctl.</p>
- </li>
+ <dt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-icl6404">icl6404</a>
+ </dt>
- <li>
- <p>modified ncurses test-program's c/C tests to cycle through
- subsets of the total number of colors, to better illustrate
- 8/16/88/256-colors by providing directly comparable
- screens.</p>
- </li>
+ <dd>correct csr</dd>
- <li>
- <p>modified the ncurses test-program to also show position
- reports in 'a' test.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <dt><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-kitty">kitty</a>
+ </dt>
- <p>These changes were made to make the examples more useful:</p>
+ <dd>use att610+cvis, xterm+tmux and ansi+enq</dd>
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>added scripts for building dpkg and rpm test-packages</p>
- </li>
+ <dt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-konsole-base">konsole-base</a>
+ </dt>
- <li>
- <p>modified the hanoi test-program to show the minimum number
- of moves possible for the given number of tiles.</p>
- </li>
+ <dd>re-enable "bel"</dd>
- <li>
- <p>modified the knight test-program to show the number of
- choices possible for each position in automove option, e.g.,
- to allow user to follow Warnsdorff's rule to solve the
- puzzle.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <dt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-linux2.6">linux2.6</a>
+ </dt>
- <h3><a name="h3-database" id="h3-database">Terminal
- database</a></h3>
+ <dd>fix pound-sign mapping in acsc</dd>
- <p>This release provides improvements to tic's
- “<code>-c</code>” checking option, which was used for
- example to</p>
+ <dt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-linux3.0">linux3.0</a>
+ </dt>
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>make <code>sgr</code> in several entries agree with other
- caps.</p>
- </li>
+ <dd>modify to reflect default mapping of shift-tab by kbd
+ 1.14</dd>
- <li>
- <p>correct padding in some entries where earlier versions had
- miscounted the number of octal digits.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <dt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-pccons">pccons</a>
+ </dt>
- <p>There are several new terminal descriptions:</p>
+ <dd>fill in some missing pieces, to make it comparable to the
+ vt220 entry</dd>
- <ul>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#toc-_M_L_T_E_R_M">
- mlterm</a> is now aliased to mlterm3</li>
+ <dt><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-putty">putty</a>
+ </dt>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#tic-nsterm">
- nsterm</a> is now derived from nsterm-256color</li>
+ <dd>use vt100+fnkeys, add rep</dd>
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#tic-putty-sco">
- putty-sco</a></li>
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-screen">screen</a>
+ </dt>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#tic-teken">
- teken</a> is FreeBSD's "xterm" console.</li>
+ <dd>use vt100+enq</dd>
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#toc-_T_E_R_M_I_N_A_T_O_R">
- terminator</a></li>
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-terminator">terminator</a>
+ </dt>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#toc-_T_E_R_M_I_N_O_L_O_G_Y">
- terminology</a></li>
+ <dd>corrected tsl capability</dd>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#tic-tmux">
- tmux</a> is derived from screen.</li>
+ <dt><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-ti916">ti916</a>
+ </dt>
- <li>several screen.XXX entries support the respective
- variations for 256 colors.</li>
+ <dd>correct cup</dd>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#toc-_S_I_M_P_L_E_T_E_R_M">
- simpleterm</a> is now 0.5</li>
+ <dt><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-tmux">tmux</a>
+ </dt>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#tic-vte">
- vte</a> is aliased to vte-2012</li>
+ <dd>change kbs to ^?</dd>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt520ansi">
- vt520ansi</a></li>
- </ul>
+ <dt><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt220">vt220</a>
+ </dt>
- <p>A few entries use extensions (user-defined terminal
- capabilities):</p>
+ <dd>use vt220+cvis</dd>
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p><code>E3</code>, used in linux, putty and xterm-basic is
- tested in the <a href=
- "http://aerie.jexium-island.net/ncurses/man/clear.1.html">clear</a>
- program to erase a terminal's scrollback.</p>
- </li>
+ <dt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt420_lrmm">vt420+lrmm</a>
+ </dt>
- <li>
- <p><code>TS</code> is used in the <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm_sl">
- xterm+sl</a> building block to help deprecate the misuse of
- <code>tsl</code> for xterm's title-string.</p>
- </li>
+ <dd>add smglp and smgrp</dd>
- <li>
- <p><code>XT</code> is used in some terminfo entries to
- improve usefulness for other applications than screen, which
- would like to pretend that xterm's title is a
- status-line.</p>
- </li>
+ <dt><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-vt420">vt420</a>
+ </dt>
- <li>
- <p><code>xm</code> is used in examples <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm-1005">
- xterm-1005</a> and <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm-1006">
- xterm-1006</a> to illustrate a way to make mouse handling
- more general</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <dd>use vt420+lrmm</dd>
- <p>A few terminals support italics and/or dim capabilities. In
- particular, screen does not. Documented that, and accommodated
- the terminals where this feature works with the
- <code>A_ITALIC</code> extension.</p>
+ <dt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm-new">xterm-new</a>
+ </dt>
- <ul>
- <li>konsole, mlterm3 (italics)</li>
+ <dd>add nel</dd>
- <li>nsterm (dim)</li>
+ <dt><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm-vt52">xterm-vt52</a>
+ </dt>
- <li>screen (dim)</li>
+ <dd>use vt52+keypad</dd>
+ </dl>
- <li>vte (dim, italics)</li>
+ <p>A few entries use extensions (user-defined terminal
+ capabilities):</p>
- <li>xterm (dim, italics)</li>
+ <ul>
+ <li>add shifted Linux console keys in <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-linux_sfkeys">linux+sfkeys</a>
+ entry for <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-screen.linux">screen.linux</a></li>
+
+ <li>add Smulx to <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-alacritty">alacritty</a></li>
+
+ <li>add kbeg to <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm_keypad">xterm+keypad</a>
+ to accommodate termcap applications</li>
+
+ <li>add extensions in <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-xterm_tmux">xterm+tmux</a>
+ and <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-ecma_strikeout">ecma+strikeout</a>
+ to <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/terminfo.src.html#tic-ms-terminal">ms-terminal</a>,
+ but cancel the non-working Cr and Ms capabilities</li>
</ul>
<h3><a name="h3-documentation" id=
<li>
<p>fills in overlooked descriptions of features which were
- described in the <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html">NEWS</a> file
- but treated sketchily in manual pages.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>In addition, the mechanism for producing HTML versions of the
- documentation has been improved:</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>use an improved version of <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/scripts/man2html.html">man2html</a>
- to generate html manpages.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>regenerated <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html">
- NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html</a> to fix some of the broken
- html emitted by docbook.</p>
+ described in the <a href="@HOMEPAGE@/NEWS.html">NEWS</a> file
+ but treated sketchily in manual pages.</p>
</li>
</ul>
- <h3><a name="h3-bug-fixes" id="h3-bug-fixes">Interesting
- bug-fixes</a></h3>
+ <p>In addition to providing background information to explain
+ these features and show how they evolved, there are corrections,
+ clarifications, etc.:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>Ada95 binding:</p>
+ <p>Corrections:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>modify makefile rules to ensure that the PIC option is
- not used when building a static library</p>
+ <p>make <em>opts</em> extension for <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_getcchar.3x.html#h3-getcchar"><tt>getcchar</tt></a>
+ work as documented for <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/announce-6.1.htmll#h4-new-library">ncurses
+ 6.1</a>, adding “<tt>-g</tt>” flag to
+ <em>demo_new_pair</em> to illustrate.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>make Ada95 build-fix for big-endian architectures such
- as sparc. This undoes one of the fixes from <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t20110319">
- 20110319</a>, which added an
- “<code>Unused</code>” member to
- representation clauses, replacing that with pragmas to
- suppress warnings about unused bits.</p>
+ <p>modify <a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/tset.1.html">tset</a>
+ “-q” option to refrain from modifying
+ terminal modes, to match the documentation.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
- <p>Color and attributes:</p>
+ <p>New/improved history and portability sections:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>parenthesize parameter of <code>COLOR_PAIR</code> and
- <code>PAIR_NUMBER</code> in curses.h in case it happens
- to be a comma-expression.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>improve <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t20021221">
- 20021221</a> workaround for broken acs, handling a case
- where that ACS_<em>xxx</em> character is not in the
- <code>acsc</code> string but there is a known
- wide-character which can be used.</p>
+ <p>improve documentation for <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/terminfo.5.html#h3-Parameterized-Strings">
+ tparm</a> and static/dynamic variables.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>modify <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_color.3x.html#h3-Routine-Descriptions">
- init_pair</a> to accept -1's for color value after
- <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/default_colors.3x.html">
- assume_default_colors</a> has been called.</p>
+ <p>add history note to <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_scanw.3x.html#h2-HISTORY">curs_scanw.3x</a>
+ for <stdarg.h> and <varargs.h></p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>add a check in <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_color.3x.html#h3-Routine-Descriptions">
- start_color</a> to limit color-pairs to 256 when extended
- colors are not supported.</p>
+ <p>add history note to <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_printw.3x.html#h2-HISTORY">curs_printw.3x</a>
+ for <stdarg.h> and <varargs.h></p>
</li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>Resizing the screen:</p>
- <ul>
<li>
- <p>propagate error-returns from wresize, i.e., the
- internal increase_size and decrease_size functions
- through <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/resizeterm.3x.html">
- resize_term</a>.</p>
+ <p>add portability note to <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/ncurses.3x.html#h3-Header-files">ncurses.3x</a>
+ regarding <stdarg.h></p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>add check for zero/negative dimensions for
- <code>resizeterm</code> and <code>resize_term</code>.</p>
+ <p>add historical notes to <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/tput.1.html#h2-HISTORY">tput</a>,
+ <a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_terminfo.3x.html#h2-HISTORY">
+ curses-terminfo</a> and <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_color.3x.html#h2-HISTORY">curses-color</a>
+ manpages based on source-code for SVr2, SVr3 and
+ SVr4.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>modify <code>resizeterm</code> to always push a
- <code>KEY_RESIZE</code> onto the fifo, even if screensize
- is unchanged. Modify library to push a
- <code>KEY_RESIZE</code> if there was a SIGWINCH, even if
- it does not call <code>resizeterm</code>). These changes
- eliminate the case where a SIGWINCH is received, but ERR
- is returned from <code>wgetch</code> or
- <code>wgetnstr</code> because the screen dimensions did
- not change.</p>
+ <p>improve history section for <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/tset.1.html#h2-HISTORY">tset</a> manpage
+ based on the 1BSD tarball, which preceded BSD's SCCS
+ checkins by more than three years.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
- <p>Low-level interfaces</p>
+ <p>Other improvements:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>fix an old bug in the termcap emulation;
- “<code>%i</code>” was ignored in
- <code>tparm</code> because the parameters to be
- incremented were already on the internal stack.</p>
+ <p>explain in <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/ncurses.3x.html#h2-ALTERNATE-CONFIGURATIONS">
+ ncurses.3x</a> that functions in the tinfo library do not
+ rely upon wide-characters.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>change “<code>%l</code>” behavior in tparm
- to push the string length onto the stack rather than
- saving the formatted length into the output buffer.</p>
+ <p>improve manual page for <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/panel.3x.html#h2-PORTABILITY">panel</a>
+ library, extending the portability section as well as
+ documenting error-returns.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>modify name-comparison for tgetstr, etc., to
- accommodate legacy applications as well as to improve
- compatbility with BSD 4.2 termcap implementations (see
- note for <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t980725">980725</a>).</p>
+ <p>add section on margins to <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/terminfo.5.html#h3-Margins">terminfo.5</a>,
+ adapted from X/Open Curses.</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li>
+ <p>improve <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/term.5.html#h3-LEGACY-STORAGE-FORMAT">man/term.5</a>
+ section on legacy storage format.</p>
</li>
- </ul>
- </li>
- <li>High-level interfaces
+ <li>
+ <p>add a note in <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/terminfo.5.html#h3-Predefined-Capabilities">
+ terminfo.5</a> explaining that no-parameter strings such
+ as <em><tt>sgr0</tt></em> or <em><tt>cnorm</tt></em>
+ should not be used with tparm.</p>
+ </li>
- <ul>
<li>
- <p>modify internal recursion in <code>wgetch</code> which
- handles cooked mode to check if the call to
- <code>wgetnstr</code> returned an error. This can happen
- when both <code>nocbreak</code> and <code>nodelay</code>
- are set, for instance (see note for <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t960418">960418</a>).</p>
+ <p>improve description of BSD-style padding in <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_termcap.3x.html#h2-BUGS">curs_termcap.3x</a></p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>add a check in internal function
- <code>waddch_nosync</code> to ensure that tab characters
- are treated as control characters; some broken locales
- claim they are printable.</p>
+ <p>improve discussion of padding versus <tt>tparm</tt>
+ and <tt>tputs</tt> in <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_terminfo.3x.html#h3-Formatting-Output">
+ man/curs_terminfo.3x</a></p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>modify menu library to ensure that a menu's top-row is
- adjusted as needed to ensure that the current item is on
- the screen</p>
+ <p>add a note in manual page to explain <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_getch.3x.html#h3-Ungetting-characters">
+ ungetch</a> vs <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_get_wch.3x.html#h3-unget_wch">unget_wch</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>fix special case where double-width character
- overwrites a single- width character in the first
- column.</p>
+ <p>improve description of error-returns in <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_addch.3x.html#h2-RETURN-VALUE">waddch</a>
+ and <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_addstr.3x.html#h2-RETURN-VALUE">waddnstr</a>
+ manual pages.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
- <h3><a name="h3-config-config" id=
- "h3-config-config">Configuration changes</a></h3>
-
- <h4><a name="h4-config-major" id="h4-config-major">Major
- changes</a></h4>
-
- <p>The <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> 6.0 configure script
- makes changes to the <em>default</em> value of several configure
- options, depending on the <code>--with-abi-version</code> option
- (i.e., whether its value is “5” or
- “6”):</p>
-
- <dl>
- <dt><code>--enable-const</code></dt>
-
- <dd>
- <p>Feature introduced in <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t970405">970405</a>
- supports the use of <code>const</code> where X/Open Curses
- should have, but did not. NetBSD curses does something
- similar with <code>const</code>.</p>
- </dd>
-
- <dt><code>--enable-ext-colors</code></dt>
-
- <dd>
- <p>Extends the <code>cchar_t</code> structure to allow more
- than 16 colors to be encoded. This applies only to the
- wide-character (<code>--enable-widec</code>)
- configuration.</p>
- </dd>
-
- <dt><code>--enable-ext-mouse</code></dt>
-
- <dd>
- <p>Modifies the encoding of mouse state to make room for a
- 5th mouse button. That allows one to use ncurses with a wheel
- mouse with xterm or similar X terminal emulators.</p>
- </dd>
-
- <dt><code>--enable-ext-putwin</code></dt>
-
- <dd>
- <p>Modifies the file-format written by <code>putwin</code> to
- use printable text rather than binary files, allowing
- <code>getwin</code> to read screen dumps written by
- differently-configured ncurses libraries. The extended
- <code>getwin</code> can still read binary screen dumps from
- the <em>same</em> configuration of ncurses. This does not
- change the ABI (the binary interface seen by calling
- applications).</p>
- </dd>
-
- <dt><code>--enable-interop</code></dt>
-
- <dd>
- <p>Modifies the <code>FIELDTYPE</code> structure used for the
- form library to make it more generic.</p>
- </dd>
-
- <dt><code>--enable-lp64</code></dt>
-
- <dd>
- <p>Allows an application to define <code>_LP64</code> to
- declare <code>chtype</code> and <code>mmask_t</code> as
- simply “<code>unsigned</code>” rather than the
- configured types using the <code>--with-chtype</code> and
- <code>--with-mmask_t</code> options.</p>
- </dd>
-
- <dt><code>--enable-sp-funcs</code></dt>
-
- <dd>
- <p>Compile-in support for extended functions which accept a
- SCREEN pointer, reducing the need for juggling the global SP
- value with <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_initscr.3x.html#h3-set_term">
- set_term</a> and <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_initscr.3x.html#h3-delscreen">
- delscreen</a>.</p>
- </dd>
-
- <dt><code>--with-chtype=uint32_t</code></dt>
-
- <dd>
- <p>Makes <code>chtype</code> explicitly a 32-bit unsigned
- value.</p>
- </dd>
-
- <dt><code>--with-mmask_t=uint32_t</code></dt>
-
- <dd>
- <p>Makes <code>mmask_t</code> explicitly a 32-bit unsigned
- value.</p>
- </dd>
+ <p>There are no new manual pages (all of the manual page updates
+ are to existing pages).</p>
- <dt><code>--with-tparm-arg=intptr_t</code></dt>
+ <p>Some of the improvements are more subtle, relating to the way
+ the information is presented. For instance, hyphenation is
+ suppressed in the HTML files generated from manual pages because
+ an upgrade to <em>groff</em> gave noticeably poorer results,
+ interfering with the process of creating links between the
+ resulting webpages.</p>
- <dd>
- <p>X/Open Curses declares <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_terminfo.3x.html#h3-Formatting-Output">
- tparm</a> using <code>long</code> for each of the parameters
- aside from the formatting string, presuming that
- <code>long</code> and <code>char*</code> are the same size.
- This configure option uses <code>intptr_t</code> which
- provides a better guarantee of the sizes.</p>
- </dd>
- </dl>
+ <h3><a name="h3-bug-fixes" id="h3-bug-fixes">Interesting
+ bug-fixes</a></h3>
- <p>The configure script no longer checks for antique compilers;
- <code>c89</code> is assumed as a minimum. There are a few
- features from later revisions which are used when available. The
- configure script makes checks to turn on useful warnings from
- clang, gcc and icc. You should be able to build <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em> 6.0 with any of the current (or not so
- current) C compilers available in 2015.</p>
-
- <p>The configure script, by the way, makes changes which do not
- work with systems whose <code>/bin/sh</code> is non-POSIX. This
- mainly affects Solaris (the other vendor <em class=
- "small-caps">unix</em> systems have followed the POSIX guidelines
- for the past twenty years). If you must build on Solaris, its
- <a href=
- "http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/html/817-0552/fhkpy.html">xpg4</a>
- binaries suffice, e.g.,</p>
-
- <blockquote class="code-block">
- <!--{{atr2html-->
-
- <p style="font-family: monospace; font-size: 10pt;">
- <font color="#800000">#!/bin/sh</font><br>
- <font color="#008080">WHAT</font>=<strong><em><font color=
- "#800000">`</font></em></strong>hostname|sed -e <font color="#800080">'s/\..*//'</font><strong><em><font color="#800000">`</font></em></strong><br>
-
- <font color="#008080">OUT</font>=configure.out<br>
- <strong><font color=
- "#000080">cat</font></strong> >><font color=
- "#008080">$OUT</font> <font color=
- "#800080"><<EOF/</font><font color="#800080"><br>
- ** </font><strong><em><font color=
- "#800000">`</font></em></strong>date<strong><em><font color=
- "#800000">`</font></em></strong><font color="#800080"><br>
- ** node: </font><font color=
- "#008080">$WHAT</font><font color="#800080"><br>
- ** user: </font><strong><em><font color=
- "#800000">`</font></em></strong>id<strong><em><font color=
- "#800000">`</font></em></strong><font color="#800080"><br>
- ** conf: $*<br>
- EOF/</font><br>
- <br>
- <font color="#008080">SHELL</font>=/bin/sh<br>
- <strong><font color=
- "#000080">if</font></strong> <strong><font color=
- "#000080">test</font></strong> -f /usr/xpg4/bin/sh<br>
-
- <strong><font color="#000080">then</font></strong><br>
- <font color=
- "#008080">CONFIG_SHELL</font>=/usr/xpg4/bin/sh<br>
- <strong><font color="#000080">export</font></strong> CONFIG_SHELL<br>
-
- <font color=
- "#008080">SHELL</font>=<font color=
- "#008080">$CONFIG_SHELL</font><br>
- <strong><font color="#000080">fi</font></strong><br>
- <br>
- rm -f config.status config.cache<br>
- <font color="#008080">TOP</font>=<font color=
- "#008080">$HOME</font>/<font color="#008080">$WHAT</font><br>
- <font color=
- "#008080">$SHELL</font> ./configure --verbose \<br>
-
- --disable-echo \<br>
-
- --disable-overwrite \<br>
-
- --enable-warnings \<br>
-
- --with-warnings \<br>
-
- --prefix=<font color="#008080">$TOP</font> <font color="#008080">$*</font> <strong><font color="#008080">2</font></strong>>&<strong><font color="#008080">1</font></strong> | tee -a <font color="#008080">$OUT</font><br>
-
- <!--atr2html}}--></p>
- </blockquote>
+ <p>While there were many bugs fixed during development of ncurses
+ 6.3, 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 <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/NEWS.html#t20211018">NEWS</a> file no elaboration is
+ needed here.</p>
- <p>Other major changes to the configure script include:</p>
+ <p>The interesting bugs were:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>ABI 6 is now the default, intending that the existing ABI
- 5 should build as before using the
- “<code>--with-abi-version=5</code>” option.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>added <code>--with-extra-suffix</code> option to help with
- installing nonconflicting ncurses6 packages, e.g., avoiding
- header- and library-conflicts.</p>
-
- <p><strong>NOTE:</strong> as a side-effect, this renames</p>
+ <p>modify <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_bkgd.3x.html#h3-bkgd">wbkgd</a> and
+ <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_bkgrnd.3x.html#h3-bkgrnd">wbkgrnd</a> to
+ avoid storing a null in the background character, because it
+ may be used in cases where the corresponding 0x80 is not
+ treated as a null.</p>
- <blockquote>
- <p><code>adacurses-config</code> to
- <code>adacurses5-config</code> and<br>
- <code>adacursesw-config</code> to
- <code>adacursesw5-config</code></p>
- </blockquote>
+ <p>This was a regression introduced in ncurses 6.2 (<a href=
+ "https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses/2020-03/msg00000.html">reported</a>
+ on the mailing list), for which the workaround was to specify
+ a blank for the background character.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>the configure script looks for gnatgcc if the Ada95
- binding is built, in preference to the default gcc/cc. The
- script also ensures that the Ada95 binding is built with the
- level of optimization as the C libraries.</p>
+ <p>remove output-related checks for <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/curs_outopts.3x.html">nl/nonl</a> (also
+ <a href=
+ "https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses/2020-09/msg00018.html">
+ reported</a> on the mailing list).</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>the configure script captures define's related to
- -D_XOPEN_SOURCE from the configure check and adds those to
- the *-config and *.pc files, to simplify use for the
- wide-character libraries.</p>
+ <p>improve tparm implementation of <tt>%P</tt> and
+ <tt>%g</tt>, more closely matching SVr4 terminfo. Those
+ denote <em>static</em> and <em>dynamic</em> variables in
+ terminfo expressions.</p>
+
+ <p>Exactly what those terms meant was never documented before
+ in any implementation of curses, aside from source code.
+ Unlike the other two fixes, the problem was discovered while
+ studying OpenBSD's version of <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses-openbsd.html#issue_tput">tset</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
+ <h3><a name="h3-config-config" id=
+ "h3-config-config">Configuration changes</a></h3>
+
+ <h4><a name="h4-config-major" id="h4-config-major">Major
+ changes</a></h4>
+
+ <p>There are no major changes. Several new options were added to
+ ease integration of packages with systems using different
+ versions of <em>GNAT</em> and <em>ncurses</em>. Also,
+ improvements were made to configure checks.</p>
+
<h4><a name="h4-config-options" id=
"h4-config-options">Configuration options</a></h4>
- <p>There are several new (or extended) configure options:</p>
+ <p>There are a few new/modified configure options:</p>
<dl>
- <dt><code>--disable-db-install</code></dt>
+ <dt><tt>--enable-fvisibility</tt>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>Do not install the terminal database. This is used to omit
- features for packages, as done with
- <code>--without-progs</code>. The option simplifies building
- cross-compile support packages.</p>
+ <p>new configure option and check for <em>gcc</em>
+ <tt>-fvisibility=hidden</tt> feature</p>
</dd>
- <dt><code>--disable-gnat-projects</code></dt>
+ <dt><tt>--enable-leaks</tt>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>This option is used for regression testing</p>
+ <p>corrected to allow turning leak-checking off later in a
+ set of options.</p>
</dd>
- <dt><code>--disable-lib-suffixes</code></dt>
+ <dt><tt>--enable-stdnoreturn</tt>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>Suppress the “w”, “t” or
- “tw” suffixes which normally would be added to
- the library names for the <code>--enable-widec</code> and
- <code>--with-pthread</code> options.</p>
+ <p>new configure option makes the <code>_Noreturn</code>
+ keyword optional to ease transition.</p>
</dd>
- <dt><code>--with-cxx-shared</code></dt>
+ <dt><tt>--disable-pkg-ldflags</tt>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>When <code>--with-shared</code> is set, build libncurses++
- as a shared library. This implicitly relies upon building
- with gcc/g++, since other compiler suites may have
- differences in the way shared libraries are built. libtool by
- the way has similar limitations.</p>
+ <p>revised option also controls whether <code>$LDFLAGS</code>
+ from the build is provided in “<tt>-config</tt>”
+ and “<tt>.pc</tt>” files.</p>
</dd>
- <dt><code>--with-hashed-db</code></dt>
+ <dt><tt>--disable-root-access</tt>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>Extended this configure option to simplify building with
- different versions of Berkeley database using FreeBSD
- ports.</p>
+ <p>add configure option which tells ncurses to disallow most
+ file-opens by setuid processes.</p>
</dd>
- <dt><code>--with-pc-suffix</code></dt>
+ <dt><tt>--disable-wattr-macros</tt>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>If ".pc" files are installed, optionally add a suffix to
- the files and corresponding package names to separate unusual
- configurations. If no option value is given (or if it is
- "none"), no suffix is added. This option is used in the test
- package for ncurses6.</p>
+ <p>changed default to help packagers who reuse wide ncursesw
+ header file with non-wide ncurses library.</p>
</dd>
- <dt><code>--with-xterm-kbs</code></dt>
+ <dt><tt>--with-pkg-config-libdir</tt>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>Configure xterm's terminfo entries to use either BS
- (<code>^H</code>, i.e., ASCII backspace) or DEL
- (<code>^?</code>, or 127).</p>
+ <p>revised option uses the actual search path from
+ <em>pkg-config</em> or <em>pkgconf</em> using the output from
+ <tt>--debug</tt>.</p>
</dd>
- </dl>
-
- <h3><a name="h3-portability" id=
- "h3-portability">Portability</a></h3>
-
- <h4><a name="h4-port-mingw" id="h4-port-mingw">MinGW</a></h4>
-
- <p>Most of the portability-related work since <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/announce-5.9.html"><em class="small-caps">
- ncurses</em> 5.9</a> extended and improved the MinGW port
- introduced in <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/announce-5.8.html"><em class="small-caps">
- ncurses</em> 5.8</a>.</p>
-
- <p>The MinGW port can be readily cross-compiled:</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>modified configure script to allow creating dll's for
- MinGW when cross-compiling.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>enforced Windows-style path-separator if
- cross-compiling,</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>added scripts for test-builds of cross-compiled packages
- for ncurses6 to MinGW.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>added pc-files to the MinGW cross-compiling
- test-packages.</p>
- </li>
- <li>
- <p>added script for building test-packages of binaries
- cross-compiled to MinGW using NSIS.</p>
- </li>
+ <dt><tt>--with-ada-libname</tt><br>
+ <tt>--with-form-libname</tt><br>
+ <tt>--with-menu-libname</tt><br>
+ <tt>--with-panel-libname</tt>
+ </dt>
- <li>
- <p>added <code>nc_mingw.h</code> to installed headers for
- MinGW port; this is needed for cross-compiling <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html">ncurses-examples</a>.</p>
- </li>
+ <dd>
+ <p>new several <tt>--with-<em>xxx</em>-libname</tt> options,
+ to help with pkgsrc</p>
+ </dd>
+ </dl>
- <li>
- <p>added test-packages for cross-compiling ncurses-examples
- using the MinGW test-packages.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <h3><a name="h3-portability" id="h3-portability">Portability</a></h3>
- <p>The MinGW-specific Windows driver accounts for several
- changes:</p>
+ <p>Many of the portability changes are implemented via the
+ configure script:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>wide-character display is made usable by replacing MinGW's
- non-working <code>wcrtomb</code> and <code>wctomb</code>
- functions.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>implemented some display features: <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_beep.3x.html">beep</a>,
- <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_beep.3x.html">flash</a>,
- <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_kernel.3x.html#h3-curs_set">
- curs_set</a>.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>the driver handles repainting on endwin/refresh
- combination.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>modified treatment of <code>TERM</code> variable for MinGW
- port to allow explicit use of the Windows console driver by
- checking if <code>$TERM</code> is set to
- “<code>#win32console</code>” or an abbreviation
- of that.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>the Windows driver also matches the special
- <code>TERM</code> value “unknown”</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>the driver now returns characters for special keys, (like
- <code>ansi.sys</code> does), when keypad mode is off, rather
- than returning nothing at all.</p>
- </li>
+ <p>add a special case in the configure script to work around
+ one of the build-time breakages reported for <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses-openbsd.html">OpenBSD 6</a> here:</p>
- <li>
- <p>the driver checks a new environment variable <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/ncurses.3x.html#h3-NCURSES_CONSOLE2">
- NCURSES_CONSOLE2</a> to optionally work around a deficiency
- in <code>Console2</code> (and its descendent
- <code>ConsoleZ</code>) which hang when an application creates
- a console buffer.</p>
+ <blockquote>
+ <p><a href=
+ "https://www.mail-archive.com/bugs@openbsd.org/msg13200.html">
+ https://www.mail-archive.com/bugs@openbsd.org/msg13200.html</a></p>
+ </blockquote>
</li>
- </ul>
-
- <p>Finally, there are other improvements:</p>
- <ul>
<li>
- <p>MinGW is one of the configurations where <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em> installs by default into /usr</p>
+ <p>modify configure check for <em>libtool</em> to prevent
+ accidental use of an OpenBSD program which uses the same
+ name.</p>
</li>
- <li>configuration for cross-compiling uses AC_CHECK_TOOLS in
- preference to AC_PATH_PROGS when searching for ncurses*-config,
- e.g., in Ada95/configure and test/configure.</li>
-
<li>
- <p>extend Windows support to work with MSYS2;</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>this works with a scenario where there is an
- ANSI-escape handler such as <code>ansicon</code> running
- in the console window.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>wrap <code>isatty</code> calls with a macro, provide a
- corresponding set of support routines to address
- differences between MinGW and MSYS2.</li>
- </ul>
+ <p>modify configuration checks for build-time tic/infocmp to
+ use <em>AC_CHECK_TOOL</em>. That can still be overridden by
+ <tt>--with-tic-path</tt> and <tt>--with-infocmp-path</tt>
+ when fallbacks are used, but even if not using fallbacks, the
+ improved check may help with cross-compiling.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>ensure <code>WINVER</code> is defined in makefiles rather
- than using headers.</p>
+ <p>relax modification-time comparison in
+ <em>CF_LINK_FUNCS</em> to allow it to accept link() function
+ with NFS filesystems which change the mtime on the link
+ target, e.g., several BSD systems.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>add check for the <code>gnatprep</code>
- “<code>-T</code>” option.</p>
+ <p>modify configure check for c89/c99 aliases of
+ <em>clang</em> to use its <tt>-std</tt> option instead,
+ because some platforms, in particular macOS, do not provide
+ workable c89/c99 aliases.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>work around a bug introduced by <a href=
- "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20877689/gcc-4-8-1-minggw-d-option-does-not-work-as-usual">
- gcc 4.8.1</a> in MinGW which breaks "trace" feature.</p>
+ <p>modify <em>CF_NCURSES_CONFIG</em> to work around
+ <em>Xcode</em>'s c99 "-W" option, which conflicts with
+ conventional use for passing linker options.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>add a driver-name method to each of the drivers.</p>
+ <p>modify configure scripts to filter out redefinitions of
+ _XOPEN_SOURCE, e.g., for NetBSD which generally supports 500,
+ but 600 is needed for ncursesw.</p>
</li>
</ul>
- <h4><a name="h4-port-systems" id="h4-port-systems">Other
- ports</a></h4>
-
- <p>These changes affect certain platforms (ports):</p>
+ <p>Here are some of the other portability fixes:</p>
<ul>
<li>
- <p>the configure script knows how to build shared libraries
- with DragonFlyBSD and Interix.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>support for AIX shared libraries is improved, tested with
- AIX 5.3, 6.1 and 7.1 with both gcc 4.2.4 and cc:</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>the shared-library suffix for AIX 5 and 6 is now
- ".so"</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>the <code>-brtl</code> option is used with AIX 5-7; it
- is needed to link with the shared libraries.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>the configure <code>--enable-pc-files</code> option takes
- into account the <a href=
- "http://linux.die.net/man/1/pkg-config"><code>PKG_CONFIG_PATH</code></a>
- variable.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>the configure option <code>--with-pkg-config-libdir</code>
- provides control over the actual directory into which
- pc-files are installed.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>the build scripts add explicit -ltinfo, etc., to the
- generated ".pc" file when <code>ld</code> option
- “<code>--as-needed</code>” is used, or when
- ncurses and tinfo are installed without using rpath.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>the configure script disallows conflicting options
- “<code>--with-termlib</code>” and
- “<code>--enable-term-driver</code>”.</p>
+ <p>change configure-check and source-code for gcc's noreturn
+ attribute to assume it is a prefix rather than suffix,
+ matching c11's _Noreturn convention.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>the check for missing c++ compiler to work when no error
- is reported, and no variables set is improved (see note for
- <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t20021206">20021206</a>).</p>
+ <p>modify mk-1st.awk to account for extra-suffix configure
+ option.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>the misc/gen_edit.sh script selects a "linux" entry which
- works with the current kernel rather than assuming it is
- always "linux3.0"</p>
+ <p>build-fix for termsort module when configured with
+ termcap.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>the test/configure script makes it simpler to override
- names of curses-related libraries, to help with linking with
- pdcurses in MinGW environment.</p>
+ <p>modify configure script and makefiles to support ".PHONY"
+ make program feature.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>the configure-script/ifdef's allow the BSD OLD_TTY feature
- to be suppressed if the type of <code>ospeed</code> is
- configured using the option <code>--with-ospeed</code> to not
- be a <code>short</code>. By default, it is a
- <code>short</code> for termcap-compatibility.</p>
+ <p>amend <em>libtool</em> configuration to add dependency for
+ install.tic, etc., in ncurses/Makefile on the lower-level
+ libraries.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>the MKlib_gen.sh script works around a recent change in
- gcc 5 (released <a href=
- "https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-5/">mid-2015</a>) which essentially
- emits multiple <code>#line</code> statements for the same
- position in a file.</p>
+ <p>modify Ada95 source-generation utility to write to a file
+ given as parameter rather than to the standard output,
+ allowing builds with MinGW.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>the configure script works with Minix3.2 (see <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/autoconf/portability-test.html">note</a>
- on portability)</p>
+ <p>amend tic/infocmp check to allow for the respective tool's
+ absence.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>OS/2 redux:</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>the configure script supports OS/2 kLIBC.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>the <code>--with-lib-prefix</code> option allows
- configuring for old/new flavors of OS/2 EMX.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <p>build-fixes for gnat 10.1.1, whose gnatmake drops
+ integration with gprbuild.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>improved configure-script checks for
- <code>_XOPEN_SOURCE</code>:</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li>
- <p>the definition works starting with Solaris 10.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
- <p>the definition is suppressed for IRIX64, since its
- header files have a conflict versus
- <code>_SGI_SOURCE</code>.</p>
- </li>
- </ul>
+ <p>correct configure version-check/warning for g++ to allow
+ for 10.x</p>
</li>
</ul>
+
<hr>
- <h2><a name="h2-features" id="h2-features">Features of <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em></a></h2>
+ <h2><a name="h2-features" id="h2-features">Features of
+ <span class="main-name">ncurses</span></a></h2>
- <p>The <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> package is fully
+ <p>The <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> package is fully
upward-compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4) curses:</p>
<ul>
</li>
<li>
- <p><em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> supports all of the
+ <p><span class="main-name">ncurses</span> supports all of the
for SVr4 curses features including keyboard mapping, color,
forms-drawing with ACS characters, and automatic recognition
of keypad and function keys.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p><em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> provides these SVr4
+ <p><span class="main-name">ncurses</span> provides these SVr4
add-on libraries (not part of X/Open Curses):</p>
<ul>
</li>
<li>
- <p><em class="small-caps">ncurses</em>'s terminal database is
- fully compatible with that used by SVr4 curses.</p>
+ <p><span class="main-name">ncurses</span>'s terminal database
+ is fully compatible with that used by SVr4 curses.</p>
<ul>
- <li><em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> supports
- user-defined capabilities which it can see, but which are
- hidden from SVr4 curses applications using the
- <em>same</em> terminal database.</li>
+ <li>
+ <p><span class="main-name">ncurses</span> supports
+ user-defined capabilities which it can see, but which are
+ hidden from SVr4 curses applications using the
+ <em>same</em> terminal database.</p>
+ </li>
<li>
<p>It can be optionally configured to match the format
</li>
<li>
- <p>Alternatively, <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> can
- be configured to use hashed databases rather than the
+ <p>Alternatively, <span class="main-name">ncurses</span>
+ can be configured to use hashed databases rather than the
directory of files used by SVr4 curses.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
- <p>The <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> utilities have
+ <p>The <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> utilities have
options to allow you to filter terminfo entries for use with
less capable <em>curses</em>/<em>terminfo</em> versions such
- as the HP/UX and AIX ports.</p>
+ as the HP-UX and AIX ports.</p>
</li>
</ul>
- <p>The <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> package also has many
- useful extensions over SVr4:</p>
+ <p>The <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> package also has
+ many useful extensions over SVr4:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The API is 8-bit clean and base-level conformant with the
X/OPEN curses specification, XSI curses (that is, it
- implements all BASE level features, and most EXTENDED
- features). It includes many function calls not supported
- under SVr4 curses (but portability of all calls is documented
- so you can use the SVr4 subset only).</p>
+ implements all <em>BASE</em> level features, and most
+ <em>EXTENDED</em> features). It includes many function calls
+ not supported under SVr4 curses (but portability of all calls
+ is documented so you can use the SVr4 subset only).</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>Unlike SVr3 curses, <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em>
+ <p>Unlike SVr3 curses, <span class="main-name">ncurses</span>
can write to the rightmost-bottommost corner of the screen if
your terminal has an insert-character capability.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The functions <code>keyok</code> and
<code>define_key</code> allow you to better control the use
- of function keys, e.g., disabling the <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em> KEY_MOUSE, or by defining more than
- one control sequence to map to a given key code.</p>
+ of function keys, e.g., disabling the <span class=
+ "main-name">ncurses</span> KEY_MOUSE, or by defining more
+ than one control sequence to map to a given key code.</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li>
+ <p>Support for direct-color terminals, such as modern
+ xterm.</p>
</li>
<li>
</li>
<li>
- <p>The <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tic.1m.html">tic</a>/<a href="http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/captoinfo.1m.html">captoinfo</a>
- utility provided with <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> has
- the ability to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM
- and AT&T extension sets.</p>
+ <p>The <a href="@HOMEPAGE@/man/tic.1m.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">tic</span></a>/<a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/captoinfo.1m.html">captoinfo</a> utility
+ provided with <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> has the
+ ability to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and
+ AT&T extension sets.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A BSD-like <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/tset.1.html">tset</a>
- utility is provided.</p>
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/tset.1.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">tset</span></a> utility is provided.</p>
</li>
<li>
- <p>The <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> library and
+ <p>The <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> 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 system
<li>
<p>The table-of-entries utility <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/toe.1m.html">toe</a>
- makes it easy for users to see exactly what terminal types
- are available on the system.</p>
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/man/toe.1m.html"><span class=
+ "part-name">toe</span></a> makes it easy for users to see
+ exactly what terminal types are available on the system.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro
- entry point have a corresponding function which may be linked
+ entry point has a corresponding function which may be linked
(and will be prototype-checked) if the macro definition is
disabled with <code>#undef</code>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Extensive documentation is provided (see the <em><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#additional_reading">
- Additional Reading</a></em> section of the <em><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html"><em class="small-caps">
- ncurses</em> FAQ</a></em> for online documentation).</p>
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses.faq.html#additional_reading">Additional
+ Reading</a></em> section of the <em><a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses.faq.html"><span class=
+ "main-name">ncurses</span> FAQ</a></em> for online
+ documentation).</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="h2-who-uses" id="h2-who-uses">Applications using
- <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em></a></h2>
+ <span class="main-name">ncurses</span></a></h2>
- <p>The <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> distribution includes
- a selection of test programs (including a few games). These are
- available separately as <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html">ncurses-examples</a></p>
+ <p>The <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> distribution
+ includes a selection of test programs (including a few games).
+
These are available separately as <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses-examples.html">ncurses-examples</a></p>
<p>The ncurses library has been tested with a wide variety of
applications including:</p>
<blockquote>
<dl>
- <dt>cdk</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">aptitude</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>Curses Development Kit</p>
+ <p>FrontEnd to Apt, the debian package manager</p>
<p><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/cdk/">http://invisible-island.net/cdk/</a><br>
+ "https://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude">https://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude</a></p>
+ </dd>
+
+ <dt><span class="part-name">cdk</span>
+ </dt>
+
+ <dd>
+ <p>Curses Development Kit</p>
+
+ <p><a href="@WEBSITE@/cdk/">@WEBSITE@/cdk/</a><br>
</p>
</dd>
- <dt>ded</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">ded</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>directory-editor</p>
- <p><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ded/">http://invisible-island.net/ded/</a></p>
+ <p><a href="@WEBSITE@/ded/">@WEBSITE@/ded/</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>dialog</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">dialog</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>the underlying application used in Slackware's setup,
and the basis for similar install/configure applications on
many systems.</p>
- <p><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/dialog/">http://invisible-island.net/dialog/</a></p>
+ <p><a href="@WEBSITE@/dialog/">@WEBSITE@/dialog/</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>lynx</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">lynx</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>the text WWW browser</p>
<p><a href=
- "http://lynx.isc.org/">http://lynx.isc.org/</a></p>
+ "https://lynx.invisible-island.net/">https://lynx.invisible-island.net/</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>Midnight Commander</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">mutt</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>file manager</p>
+ <p>mail utility</p>
- <p><a href=
- "http://www.midnight-commander.org/">http://www.midnight-commander.org/</a></p>
+ <p><a href="http://www.mutt.org/">http://www.mutt.org/</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>mutt</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">ncftp</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>mail utility</p>
+ <p>file-transfer utility</p>
<p><a href=
- "http://www.mutt.org/">http://www.mutt.org/</a></p>
+ "https://www.ncftp.com/">https://www.ncftp.com/</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>ncftp</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">nvi</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>file-transfer utility</p>
+ <p>New vi uses ncurses.</p>
<p><a href=
- "http://www.ncftp.com/">http://www.ncftp.com/</a></p>
+ "https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/vi">https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/vi</a><br>
+
+ </p>
</dd>
- <dt>nvi</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">ranger</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>New vi uses ncurses.</p>
+ <p>A console file manager with VI key bindings in
+ <em>Python</em>.</p>
<p><a href=
- "https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi">https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi</a><br>
- </p>
+ "https://ranger.github.io/">https://ranger.github.io/</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>tin</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">tin</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>newsreader, supporting color, MIME</p>
- <p><a href=
- "http://www.tin.org/">http://www.tin.org/</a></p>
+ <p><a href="http://www.tin.org/">http://www.tin.org/</a></p>
+ </dd>
+
+ <dt><span class="part-name">vifm</span>
+ </dt>
+
+ <dd>
+ <p>File manager with vi like keybindings</p>
+
+ <p><a href="https://vifm.info/">https://vifm.info/</a></p>
</dd>
</dl>
</blockquote>
- <p>as well as some that use <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em>
- for the terminfo support alone:</p>
+ <p>as well as some that use <span class=
+ "main-name">ncurses</span> for the terminfo support alone:</p>
<blockquote>
<dl>
- <dt>minicom</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">minicom</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>terminal emulator for serial modem connections</p>
<p><a href=
- "http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/">http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/</a></p>
+ "https://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>mosh</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">mosh</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>a replacement for <code>ssh</code>.</p>
- <p><a href=
- "https://mosh.mit.edu/">https://mosh.mit.edu/</a></p>
+ <p><a href="https://mosh.org/">https://mosh.org/</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>tack</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">tack</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>terminfo action checker</p>
- <p><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tack.html">http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tack.html</a></p>
+ <p><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/tack.html">@HOMEPAGE@/tack.html</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>tmux</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">tmux</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>terminal multiplexor</p>
<p><a href=
- "http://tmux.github.io/">http://tmux.github.io/</a></p>
+ "https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki">https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>vile</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">vile</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
- <p>vi-like-emacs may be built to use the terminfo, termcap
- or curses interfaces.</p>
+ <p><em>vi-like-emacs</em> may be built to use the terminfo,
+ termcap or curses interfaces.</p>
- <p><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/vile/">http://invisible-island.net/vile/</a></p>
+ <p><a href="@WEBSITE@/vile/">@WEBSITE@/vile/</a></p>
</dd>
</dl>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<dl>
- <dt>emacs</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">emacs</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>text editor</p>
<p><a href=
- "http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/</a></p>
+ "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/</a></p>
+ </dd>
+
+ <dt><span class="part-name">less</span>
+ </dt>
+
+ <dd>
+ <p>The most commonly used <em>pager</em> (a program that
+ displays text files).</p>
+
+ <p><a href=
+ "http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/">http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>screen</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">screen</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>terminal multiplexor</p>
<p><a href=
- "http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/">http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/</a></p>
+ "https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/">https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/</a></p>
</dd>
- <dt>vim</dt>
+ <dt><span class="part-name">vim</span>
+ </dt>
<dd>
<p>text editor</p>
- <p><a href=
- "http://www.vim.org/">http://www.vim.org/</a></p>
+ <p><a href="https://www.vim.org/">https://www.vim.org/</a></p>
</dd>
</dl>
</blockquote>
<h2><a name="h2-development" id="h2-development">Development
activities</a></h2>
- <p>Zeyd Ben-Halim started <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em>
+ <p>Zeyd Ben-Halim started <span class="main-name">ncurses</span>
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 development work is done by
- <a href="mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net">Thomas Dickey</a>.
- Thomas Dickey also acts as the maintainer for the Free Software
- Foundation, which holds the <a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-license.html">copyright
- on ncurses</a>.</p>
+ the form and menu libraries.</p>
+
+ <p>Ongoing development work is done by <a href=
+ "mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net">Thomas E. Dickey</a>. Thomas
+ E. Dickey has acted as the maintainer for the Free Software
+ Foundation, which held a <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses-license.html">copyright on ncurses</a> 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 <a href=
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses.faq.html#relicensed">ncurses FAQ</a> for
+ additional information).</p>
<p>Contact the current maintainers at</p>
<blockquote>
<a href=
"mailto:bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org">bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org</a>
- </blockquote>containing the line:
-
+ </blockquote>
+ containing the line:
<blockquote>
<p><code>subscribe</code>
<em><name>@<host.domain></em></p>
<p>This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the
development and testing of this package.</p>
- <p>Beta versions of <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> and
- patches to the current release are made available at</p>
+ <p>Beta versions of <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> are
+ made available at</p>
+
+ <blockquote>
+ <p><a href=
+ "ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/current/">ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/current/</a>
+ and<br>
+ <a href=
+ "https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/current/">https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/current/</a> .</p>
+ </blockquote>
+
+ <p>Patches to the current release are made available at</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href=
- "ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a> .</p>
+ "ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/6.2/">ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/6.2/</a>
+ and<br>
+ <a href=
+ "https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/6.2/">https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/6.2/</a> .</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is an archive of the mailing list here:</p>
which may be interesting by themselves:</p>
<ul>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/scripts/man2html.html">man2html</a></li>
-
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.nethttp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-license.html">
- <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em> licensing</a></li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses-license.html"><span class=
+ "main-name">ncurses</span> licensing</a></li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-mapsyms.html">Symbol
- versioning in <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em></a></li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses-mapsyms.html">Symbol versioning
+ in <span class="main-name">ncurses</span></a></li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-mingw.html">The
- MinGW port of <em class="small-caps">ncurses</em></a></li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses-slang.html">Comments on
+ <span class="main-name">ncurses</span> versus <span class=
+ "main-name">slang</span> (S-Lang)</a></li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tack.html">tack –
- terminfo action checker</a></li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses-openbsd.html">Comments on
+ <span class="main-name">OpenBSD</span></a></li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/autoconf/portability-tar.html">tar
- versus portability</a></li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/tack.html">tack – terminfo action
+ checker</a></li>
- <li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tctest.html">tctest
- – termcap library checker</a></li>
+ <li><a href="@HOMEPAGE@/tctest.html">tctest – termcap
+ library checker</a></li>
<li><a href=
- "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.html#download_database">
- Terminal Database</a></li>
+ "@HOMEPAGE@/ncurses.html#download_database">Terminal
+ Database</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="h2-other-stuff" id="h2-other-stuff">Other
terminfo-format terminal description file once 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, and provides several
- user-definable extensions beyond the X/Open specification.</p>
+ terminfo data are provided in the same file, which also provides
+ several user-definable extensions beyond the X/Open
+ specification.</p>
<p>You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics
not covered in the terminfo file at <a href=
"http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal">
- Richard Shuford's archive</a> .</p>
+ Richard Shuford's archive</a> . The collection of computer
+ manuals at <a href=
+ "http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/">bitsavers.org</a> has also been
+ useful.</p>
<div class="nav">
<ul>
<li>
<a href="#h2-release-notes">Release Notes</a>
-
<ul>
<li>
<a href="#h3-library">Library improvements</a>
-
<ul>
- <li><a href="#h3-lib-setbuf">Output
- buffering</a></li>
-
- <li><a href="#h3-lib-versioning">Symbol
- versioning</a></li>
+ <li><a href="#h4-new-library">New features</a></li>
- <li><a href="#h3-lib-other">Miscellaneous</a></li>
+ <li><a href="#h4-fixes-library">Other
+ improvements</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<a href="#h3-programs">Program improvements</a>
-
<ul>
<li><a href="#h4-utilities">Utilities</a></li>
<li><a href="#h3-documentation">Documentation</a></li>
- <li><a href="#h3-bug-fixes">Interesting
- bug-fixes</a></li>
+ <li><a href="#h3-bug-fixes">Interesting bug-fixes</a></li>
<li>
<a href="#h3-config-config">Configuration changes</a>
-
<ul>
<li><a href="#h4-config-major">Major changes</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
- <li>
- <a href="#h3-portability">Portability</a>
-
- <ul>
- <li><a href="#h4-port-mingw">MinGW</a></li>
-
- <li><a href="#h4-port-systems">Other ports</a></li>
- </ul>
- </li>
+ <li><a href="#h3-portability">Portability</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
- <li><a href="#h2-features">Features of <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em></a></li>
+ <li><a href="#h2-features">Features of <span class=
+ "main-name">ncurses</span></a></li>
- <li><a href="#h2-who-uses">Applications using <em class=
- "small-caps">ncurses</em></a></li>
+ <li><a href="#h2-who-uses">Applications using <span class=
+ "main-name">ncurses</span></a></li>
<li><a href="#h2-development">Development activities</a></li>
projects / ncurses.git / blobdiff