'\" t
.\"***************************************************************************
-.\" Copyright (c) 1998-2007,2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
+.\" Copyright (c) 1998-2008,2009 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: ncurses.3x,v 1.90 2008/09/27 19:30:39 tom Exp $
+.\" $Id: ncurses.3x,v 1.93 2009/10/31 20:45:09 tom Exp $
.hy 0
.TH ncurses 3X ""
.ds n 5
routines; color manipulation; use of soft label keys; terminfo capabilities;
and access to low-level terminal-manipulation routines.
.PP
-To initialize the routines, the routine \fBinitscr\fR or \fBnewterm\fR
-must be called before any of the other routines that deal with windows
+The library uses the locale which the calling program has initialized.
+That is normally done with \fBsetlocale\fP:
+.sp
+ \fBsetlocale(LC_ALL, "");\fP
+.sp
+If the locale is not initialized,
+the library assumes that characters are printable as in ISO-8859-1,
+to work with certain legacy programs.
+You should initialize the locale and not rely on specific details of
+the library when the locale has not been setup.
+.PP
+The function \fBinitscr\fR or \fBnewterm\fR
+must be called to initialize the library
+before any of the other routines that deal with windows
and screens are used.
The routine \fBendwin\fR must be called before exiting.
+.PP
To get character-at-a-time input without echoing (most
interactive, screen oriented programs want this), the following
sequence should be used:
=
COLOR_PAIR/\fBcurs_color\fR(3X)
PAIR_NUMBER/\fBcurs_attr\fR(3X)
+_nc_free_and_exit/\fBcurs_memleaks\fR(3X)*
+_nc_freeall/\fBcurs_memleaks\fR(3X)*
_nc_tracebits/\fBcurs_trace\fR(3X)*
_traceattr/\fBcurs_trace\fR(3X)*
_traceattr2/\fBcurs_trace\fR(3X)*
(i.e., the \fBcmdch\fP capability)
of the loaded terminfo entries to the value of this symbol.
Very few terminfo entries provide this feature.
+.IP
+Because this name is also used in development environments to represent
+the C compiler's name, \fBncurses\fR ignores it if it does not happen to
+be a single character.
.TP 5
COLUMNS
Specify the width of the screen in characters.