- Normally <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> enables buffered output during ter-
- minal initialization. This is done (as in SVr4
- curses) for performance reasons. For testing pur-
- poses, both of <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> and certain applications, this
- feature is made optional. Setting the
- NCURSES_NO_SETBUF variable disables output buffering,
- leaving the output in the original (usually line
- buffered) mode.
+ This setting is obsolete. Before changes
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> started with 5.9 patch 20120825 and
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> continued though 5.9 patch 20130126
+
+ <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> enabled buffered output during terminal ini-
+ tialization. This was done (as in SVr4 curses) for
+ performance reasons. For testing purposes, both of
+ <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> and certain applications, this feature was
+ made optional. Setting the NCURSES_NO_SETBUF vari-
+ able disabled output buffering, leaving the output in
+ the original (usually line buffered) mode.
+
+ In the current implementation, ncurses performs its
+ own buffering and does not require this workaround.
+ It does not modify the buffering of the standard out-
+ put.
+
+ The reason for the change was to make the behavior
+ for interrupts and other signals more robust. One
+ drawback is that certain nonconventional programs
+ would mix ordinary stdio calls with ncurses calls and
+ (usually) work. This is no longer possible since
+ ncurses is not using the buffered standard output but
+ its own output (to the same file descriptor). As a
+ special case, the low-level calls such as <STRONG>putp</STRONG> still
+ use the standard output. But high-level curses calls
+ do not.
projects / ncurses.git / blobdiff