.\"***************************************************************************
-.\" Copyright (c) 2001-2012,2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
+.\" Copyright (c) 2001-2015,2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
.\" *
.\" Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a *
.\" copy of this software and associated documentation files (the *
.\" authorization. *
.\"***************************************************************************
.\"
-.\" $Id: curs_getcchar.3x,v 1.17 2015/07/21 09:30:38 tom Exp $
+.\" $Id: curs_getcchar.3x,v 1.18 2017/03/31 10:50:54 tom Exp $
.TH curs_getcchar 3X ""
.de bP
.IP \(bu 4
.IP
The string may contain a single control character instead.
In that case, no nonspacing characters are allowed.
-.SH NOTES
+.SH EXTENSIONS
.PP
-The \fIopts\fP argument is reserved for future use.
-Currently, an application must provide a null pointer as \fIopts\fP.
+X/Open Curses documents the \fIopts\fP argument as reserved for future use,
+saying that it must be null.
+This implementation
+uses that parameter in ABI 6 for the functions which have a color-pair
+parameter to support extended color pairs:
+.bP
+For functions which modify the color, e.g., \fBsetcchar\fP,
+if \fIopts\fP is set it is treated as a pointer to \fBint\fP,
+and used to set the color pair instead of the \fBshort\fP pair parameter.
+.bP
+For functions which retrieve the color, e.g., \fBgetcchar\fP,
+if \fIopts\fP is set it is treated as a pointer to \fBint\fP,
+and used to retrieve the color pair as an \fBint\fP value,
+in addition retrieving it via the standard pointer to \fBshort\fP parameter.
+.SH NOTES
.PP
The \fIwcval\fP argument may be a value generated by a call to
\fBsetcchar\fP or by a function that has a \fBcchar_t\fP output argument.