Our conventions are simple:
1. Maintain package-internal files in plain text. The expected viewer
- for them more(1) or an editor window; there's no point in
+ for them more(1) or an editor window; there is no point in
elaborate mark-up.
2. Mark up manual pages in the man macros. These have to be viewable
through traditional man(1) programs.
When in doubt, HTMLize a master and use lynx(1) to generate plain
ASCII (as we do for the announcement document).
- The reason for choosing HTML is that it's (a) well-adapted for on-line
- browsing through viewers that are everywhere; (b) more easily readable
- as plain text than most other mark-ups, if you don't have a viewer;
- and (c) carries enough information that you can generate a
+ The reason for choosing HTML is that it is (a) well-adapted for
+ on-line browsing through viewers that are everywhere; (b) more easily
+ readable as plain text than most other mark-ups, if you do not have a
+ viewer; and (c) carries enough information that you can generate a
nice-looking printed version from it. Also, of course, it make
exporting things like the announcement document to WWW pretty trivial.
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The ncurses code is maintained by a small group of volunteers. While
- we try our best to fix bugs promptly, we simply don't have a lot of
+ we try our best to fix bugs promptly, we simply do not have a lot of
hours to spend on elementary hand-holding. We rely on intelligent
cooperation from our users. If you think you have found a bug in
ncurses, there are some steps you can take before contacting us that
will help get the bug fixed quickly.
In order to use our bug-fixing time efficiently, we put people who
- show us they've taken these steps at the head of our queue. This means
- that if you don't, you'll probably end up at the tail end and have to
- wait a while.
+ show us they have taken these steps at the head of our queue. This
+ means that if you do not, you will probably end up at the tail end and
+ have to wait a while.
1. Develop a recipe to reproduce the bug.
Bugs we can reproduce are likely to be fixed very quickly, often
within days. The most effective single thing you can do to get a
2. Try to reproduce the bug on a different terminal type.
In our experience, most of the behaviors people report as library
bugs are actually due to subtle problems in terminal descriptions.
- This is especially likely to be true if you're using a traditional
- asynchronous terminal or PC-based terminal emulator, rather than
- xterm or a UNIX console entry.
- It's therefore extremely helpful if you can tell us whether or not
- your problem reproduces on other terminal types. Usually you'll
- have both a console type and xterm available; please tell us
+ This is especially likely to be true if you are using a
+ traditional asynchronous terminal or PC-based terminal emulator,
+ rather than xterm or a UNIX console entry.
+ It is therefore extremely helpful if you can tell us whether or
+ not your problem reproduces on other terminal types. Usually you
+ will have both a console type and xterm available; please tell us
whether or not your bug reproduces on both.
If you have xterm available, it is also good to collect xterm
reports for different window sizes. This is especially true if you
normally use an unusual xterm window size -- a surprising number
- of the bugs we've seen are either triggered or masked by these.
+ of the bugs we have seen are either triggered or masked by these.
3. Generate and examine a trace file for the broken behavior.
Recompile your program with the debugging versions of the
libraries. Insert a trace() call with the argument set to
tell you immediately if this is happening, and save you from the
possible embarrassment of being told that the bug is in your code
and is your problem rather than ours.
- If the virtual-screen dumps look correct but the bug persists,
- it's possible to crank up the trace level to give more and more
+ If the virtual-screen dumps look correct but the bug persists, it
+ is possible to crank up the trace level to give more and more
information about the library's update actions and the control
sequences it issues to perform them. The test directory of the
distribution contains a tool for digesting these logs to make them
less tedious to wade through.
- Often you'll find terminfo problems at this stage by noticing that
- the escape sequences put out for various capabilities are wrong.
- If not, you're likely to learn enough to be able to characterize
- any bug in the screen-update logic quite exactly.
+ Often you will find terminfo problems at this stage by noticing
+ that the escape sequences put out for various capabilities are
+ wrong. If not, you are likely to learn enough to be able to
+ characterize any bug in the screen-update logic quite exactly.
4. Report details and symptoms, not just interpretations.
- If you do the preceding two steps, it is very likely that you'll
+ If you do the preceding two steps, it is very likely that you will
discover the nature of the problem yourself and be able to send us
a fix. This will create happy feelings all around and earn you
- good karma for the first time you run into a bug you really can't
+ good karma for the first time you run into a bug you really cannot
characterize and fix yourself.
- If you're still stuck, at least you'll know what to tell us.
+ If you are still stuck, at least you will know what to tell us.
Remember, we need details. If you guess about what is safe to
leave out, you are too likely to be wrong.
If your bug produces a bad update, include a trace file. Try to
make the trace at the least voluminous level that pins down the
- bug. Logs that have been through tracemunch are OK, it doesn't
- throw away any information (actually they're better than
- un-munched ones because they're easier to read).
+ bug. Logs that have been through tracemunch are OK, it does not
+ throw away any information (actually they are better than
+ un-munched ones because they are easier to read).
If your bug produces a core-dump, please include a symbolic stack
trace generated by gdb(1) or your local equivalent.
- Tell us about every terminal on which you've reproduced the bug --
- and every terminal on which you can't. Ideally, sent us terminfo
- sources for all of these (yours might differ from ours).
+ Tell us about every terminal on which you have reproduced the bug
+ -- and every terminal on which you cannot. Ideally, sent us
+ terminfo sources for all of these (yours might differ from ours).
Include your ncurses version and your OS/machine type, of course!
You can find your ncurses version in the curses.h file.
The most important of these is mvcur, a test frame for the
cursor-movement optimization code. With this program, you can see
directly what control sequences will be emitted for any given cursor
- movement or scroll/insert/delete operations. If you think you've got a
- bad capability identified, you can disable it and test again. The
+ movement or scroll/insert/delete operations. If you think you have got
+ a bad capability identified, you can disable it and test again. The
program is command-driven and has on-line help.
If you think the vertical-scroll optimization is broken, or just want
lib_mouse.c lib_mvcur.c lib_refresh.c lib_setup.c lib_vidattr.c
Most of the algorithmic complexity in the library lives in these
- files. If there is a real bug in ncurses itself, it's probably here.
- We'll tour some of these files in detail below (see The Engine Room).
+ files. If there is a real bug in ncurses itself, it is probably here.
+ We will tour some of these files in detail below (see The Engine
+ Room).
Finally, there is a group of files that is actually most of the
terminfo compiler. The reason this code lives in the ncurses library
alloc_entry.c captoinfo.c comp_captab.c comp_error.c comp_hash.c
comp_parse.c comp_scan.c parse_entry.c read_termcap.c write_entry.c
- We'll discuss these in the compiler tour.
+ We will discuss these in the compiler tour.
The Engine Room
Hackers bruised by previous encounters with variant select(2) calls
may find the code in lib_twait.c interesting. It deals with the
- problem that some BSD selects don't return a reliable time-left value.
- The function timed_wait() effectively simulates a System V select.
+ problem that some BSD selects do not return a reliable time-left
+ value. The function timed_wait() effectively simulates a System V
+ select.
Mouse Events
to imply having the prefix somewhere in the function-key capabilities
at terminal-type initialization.
- This kluge only works because kmous isn't actually used by any
+ This kluge only works because kmous is not actually used by any
historic terminal type or curses implementation we know of. Best guess
- is it's a relic of some forgotten experiment in-house at Bell Labs
- that didn't leave any traces in the publicly-distributed System V
+ is it is a relic of some forgotten experiment in-house at Bell Labs
+ that did not leave any traces in the publicly-distributed System V
terminfo files. If System V or XPG4 ever gets serious about using it
again, this kluge may have to change.
TYPE_REGEXP will recognize.
The configuration code prefers the POSIX regex facility, modeled on
- System V's, but will settle for BSD regexps if the former isn't
+ System V's, but will settle for BSD regexps if the former is not
available.
Historical note: the panels code was written primarily to assist in
The implementation therefore starts with a table-driven, dual-mode
lexical analyzer (in comp_scan.c). The lexer chooses its mode (termcap
- or terminfo) based on the first `,' or `:' it finds in each entry. The
+ or terminfo) based on the first "," or ":" it finds in each entry. The
lexer does all the work of recognizing capability names and values;
the grammar above it is trivial, just "parse entries till you run out
of file".
shareable text space).
Thus, adding a new capability is usually pretty trivial, just a matter
- of adding one line to the include/Caps file. We'll have more to say
+ of adding one line to the include/Caps file. We will have more to say
about this in the section on Source-Form Translation.
Use Capability Resolution
- The background problem that makes tic tricky isn't the capability
- translation itself, it's the resolution of use capabilities. Older
+ The background problem that makes tic tricky is not the capability
+ translation itself, it is the resolution of use capabilities. Older
versions would not handle forward use references for this reason (that
is, a using terminal always had to follow its use target in the source
file). By doing this, they got away with a simple implementation
tactic; compile everything as it blows by, then resolve uses from
compiled entries.
- This won't do for ncurses. The problem is that that the whole
+ This will not do for ncurses. The problem is that that the whole
compilation process has to be embeddable in the ncurses library so
that it can be called by the startup code to translate termcap entries
- on the fly. The embedded version can't go promiscuously writing
+ on the fly. The embedded version cannot go promiscuously writing
everything it translates out to disk -- for one thing, it will
typically be running with non-root permissions.
use resolution in-memory before writing everything out. This design
has other advantages: it makes forward and back use-references equally
easy (so we get the latter for free), and it makes checking for name
- collisions before they're written out easy to do.
+ collisions before they are written out easy to do.
And this is exactly how the embedded version works. But the
stand-alone user-accessible version of tic partly reverts to the
writes out the referenced entry if it has no use capabilities. The
compiler main loop refrains from adding the entry to the in-core list
when this hook fires. If some other entry later needs to reference an
- entry that got written immediately, that's OK; the resolution code
- will fetch it off disk when it can't find it in core.
+ entry that got written immediately, that is OK; the resolution code
+ will fetch it off disk when it cannot find it in core.
Name collisions will still be detected, just not as cleanly. The
write_entry() code complains before overwriting an entry that
The include/Caps file has a header comment describing ways you can
specify source translations for nonstandard capabilities just by
- altering the master table. It's possible to set up capability aliasing
- or tell the compiler to plain ignore a given capability without
- writing any C code at all.
+ altering the master table. It is possible to set up capability
+ aliasing or tell the compiler to plain ignore a given capability
+ without writing any C code at all.
For circumstances where you need to do algorithmic translation, there
are functions in parse_entry.c called after the parse of each entry
Look for the string FIXME in source files to tag minor bugs and
potential problems that could use fixing.
- Don't try to auto-detect OS features in the main body of the C code.
- That's the job of the configuration system.
+ Do not try to auto-detect OS features in the main body of the C code.
+ That is the job of the configuration system.
To hold down complexity, do make your code data-driven. Especially, if
you can drive logic from a table filtered out of include/Caps, do it.
If you find you need to augment the data in that file in order to
- generate the proper table, that's still preferable to ad-hoc code --
- that's why the fifth field (flags) is there.
+ generate the proper table, that is still preferable to ad-hoc code --
+ that is why the fifth field (flags) is there.
Have fun!
The following notes are intended to be a first step towards DOS and
Macintosh ports of the ncurses libraries.
- The following library modules are `pure curses'; they operate only on
+ The following library modules are "pure curses"; they operate only on
the curses internal structures, do all output through other curses
calls (not including tputs() and putp()) and do not call any other
UNIX routines such as signal(2) or the stdio library. Thus, they
Modules that would have to be modified for a port start here:
- The following modules are `pure curses' but contain assumptions
+ The following modules are "pure curses" but contain assumptions
inappropriate for a memory-mapped port.
lib_longname.c
projects / ncurses.git / blobdiff