@@ -21,7 +22,7 @@ considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and is encouraging the keepers of Unix releases such as BSD/OS, freeBSD and netBSD to switch over to ncurses.
-The ncurses code was developed under Linux. It should port easily to +The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It should port easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!
The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including a @@ -31,24 +32,349 @@ the library and tools.
The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at
the GNU distribution site
-ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu.
-It is also available at
-ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses.
+ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses.
+
It is also available at
+ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses.
-
+This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 and 5.1; +very few applications will require recompilation, depending on the platform. +These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.1 release. +
+Interface changes: +
ospeed variable back to
+ short to match its use in legacy applications. It was
+ altered after ncurses 4.2 to speed_t to repair a type
+ mismatch which was introduced after 1.9.4 in 1995. The principal
+ users of termcap continued to use short, which is
+ not the same size.
+
+ NOTE: A few applications will have to be recompiled
+ (about 1% of the programs in a typical Linux distribution,
+ 10% of the programs that use ncurses). These are easy to
+ identify with nm or strings.
+
+
_nc_can_clear_with(), which
+ was built with the configure --enable-expanded option but not used.
+
+ chtype values in the debug library, and for better
+ access and buffer limit checking.
+tgoto() to make it better support existing
+ termcap applications which use hardcoded strings rather than obtain
+ all of their information from the termcap file. If the string does
+ not appear to be a terminfo string (i.e., does not refer to a "%p"
+ parameter, or terminfo-style padding), and termcap support is configured, tgoto()
+ will interpret it as termcap. Otherwise, as before, it will use
+ tparm().
+
+ tgoto() changes work properly,
+ added checks to tic which report capabilities that do
+ not reference the expected number of parameters.
+
+ --disable-root-environ adds runtime checks
+ which tell ncurses to disregard $TERMINFO and similar environment
+ variables if the current user is root, or running setuid/setgid.
+
+ --disable-assumed-color allows you to use the
+ pre-5.1 convention of default colors used for color-pair 0 to be
+ configured (see assume_default_colors()).
+
+ --program-prefix, including the
+ manpage names and cross references.
+
+ --with-database allows you to specify a
+ different terminfo source-file to install. On OS/2 EMX, the
+ default is misc/emx.src, otherwise misc/terminfo.src
+
+ --with-default-terminfo-dir allows you to
+ specify the default terminfo database directory.
+
+ --with-libtool allows you to build with
+ libtool. NOTE: libtool
+ uses a different notation for numbering shared library versions
+ from the existing ncurses configuration.
+
+
--with-manpage-tbl causes the manpages to be
+ preprocessed by tbl(1) prior to installation,
+
+ --without-curses-h causes the installation
+ process to install curses.h as ncurses.h and make appropriate
+ changes to headers and manpages.
+ --install-prefix configure
+ option from INSTALL_PREFIX to DESTDIR
+ (the latter has become common usage although the name is
+ misleading).
+
+ ld -rpath options (e.g., Linux, and Solaris)
+ to use an absolute pathname for the build tree's lib directory,
+ avoiding confusion with directories relative to the current one
+ with the installed programs.
+
+ misc/run_tic.in to use
+ tic -o, to eliminate dependency on
+ $TERMINFO variable for installs.
+ screen's terminfo entry
+ since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
+ to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
+ versions of ncurses.
+ curses_version() string to
+ report the version of ncurses with which they are compiled rather
+ than the NCURSES_VERSION string. The function returns the patch
+ level in addition to the major and minor version numbers.
+
+ tput program so it can be renamed or invoked via a link as
+ 'reset' or 'init', producing the same effect as tput reset or tput init.
+
+ no_color_video with a logic expression which is faster.
+ manlinks.sed script introduced in ncurses 5.1
+ to avoid using ERE "\+", which is not understood by standard versions
+ of sed. This happens to work with GNU sed,
+ but is not portable, and was the initial motivation for this release.
+
+ tparm() to disallow arithmetic on strings,
+ analyze the varargs list to read strings as strings and numbers as
+ numbers.
+
+ tparm()'s internal function
+ spop() to treat a null pointer as an empty string.
+
+ parse_format() in lib_tparm.c to ignore
+ precision if it is longer than 10000.
+
+ _nc_safe_strcat(), etc. Made other related changes to
+ check lengths used for strcat() and
+ strcpy().
+ non_dest_scroll_region in
+ tty_update.c to clear text after it is shifted in rather than before
+ shifting out. Also correct row computation.
+
+ rs2 capability in xterm-r6 and similar entries
+ where cursor save/restore bracketed the sequence for resetting video
+ attributes. The cursor restore would undo that.
+ _nc_utf8_outch() to avoid sign-extension when
+ checking for out-of-range value.
+ $HOME environment
+ variable, to avoid retrieving terminfo descriptions from
+ ./.terminfo .
+
+ _nc_parse_entry() and
+ postprocess_termcap() to avoid using
+ strtok(), because it is non-reentrant.
+
+ fds[] array to 0's in
+ _nc_timed_wait(); apparently poll() only
+ sets the revents members of that array when there is
+ activity corresponding to the related file.
+
+ Make_Enum_Type().
+
+ -fno-builtin option.
+ fgets() in
+ comp_scan.c next_char() function, in case
+ tic is run on a non-text file (fixes a core dump).
+
+ tic to verify that its inputs are really files,
+ in case someone tries to read a directory (or
+ /dev/zero).
+
+ open_tempfile()
+ in tic.c which made "tic -I" give an ambiguous error message about
+ tmpnam.
+
+ adjust_cancels(), which did not check
+ both alternatives when reclassifying an extended name between
+ boolean, number and string, causing an infinite loop in
+ tic.
+ tic for parameter counts in
+ capability strings, found/fixed several errors both in the
+ terminfo database and in the include/Caps file.
+ --srcdir and --with-install-prefix.
+
+ $GCC and
+ $GXX consistently compare against 'yes' rather than
+ test if they are nonnull, since either may be set to the
+ corresponding name of the C or C++ compiler.
+
+ configure --target
+ will set a default program-prefix.
+
+ tcgetattr() to allow for
+ old implementations, e.g., on BeOS, which only defined it as a
+ macro.
+
+ test in
+ configure script to use quotes, for instance fixing a problem in the
+ --disable-database option.
+
+ _nc_tracebits() for CSIZE
+ with a table to simplify working around implementations that define
+ random combinations of the related macros to zero.
+
+ _nc_basename(), used to
+ consolidate related code in progs, as well as accommodating OS/2 EMX
+ pathnames.
+
+ +The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over SVr4:
wresize() allows you to resize windows, preserving
their data.
@@ -98,7 +422,7 @@ after the end would step on a non-space character. It will
automatically shift highlight boundaries when doing so would make it
possible to draw the highlight without changing the visual appearance
of the screen.
-The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of applications -including:
+including (versions starting with those noted):
@@ -190,10 +541,10 @@ The original developers of ncurses are Zeyd Ben-Halim and Eric S. Raymond. Ongoing work is being done by -Thomas Dickey +Thomas Dickey and -Jürgen Pfeifer. -Florian La Roche +Jürgen Pfeifer. +Thomas Dickey acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation, which holds the copyright on ncurses. Contact the current maintainers at @@ -210,14 +561,14 @@ This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the development and testing of this package.
Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release are made available at -ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses. +ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses.