+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-COLORS">COLORS</a></H3><PRE>
+ After initializing curses, this variable contains the number of colors
+ which the terminal can support.
+
+
+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-COLS">COLS</a></H3><PRE>
+ After initializing curses, this variable contains the width of the
+ screen, i.e., the number of columns.
+
+
+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-ESCDELAY">ESCDELAY</a></H3><PRE>
+ This variable holds the number of milliseconds to wait after reading an
+ escape character, to distinguish between an individual escape character
+ entered on the keyboard from escape sequences sent by cursor- and func-
+ tion-keys (see <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">curses(3x)</A></STRONG>.
+
+
+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-LINES">LINES</a></H3><PRE>
+ After initializing curses, this variable contains the height of the
+ screen, i.e., the number of lines.
+
+
+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-TABSIZE">TABSIZE</a></H3><PRE>
+ This variable holds the number of columns used by the <EM>curses</EM> library
+ when converting a tab character to spaces as it adds the tab to a win-
+ dow (see <STRONG><A HREF="curs_addch.3x.html">curs_addch(3x)</A></STRONG>.
+
+
+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-The-Current-Screen">The Current Screen</a></H3><PRE>
+ This implementation of curses uses a special window <STRONG>curscr</STRONG> to record
+ its updates to the terminal screen.
+
+
+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-The-New-Screen">The New Screen</a></H3><PRE>
+ This implementation of curses uses a special window <STRONG>newscr</STRONG> to hold up-
+ dates to the terminal screen before applying them to <STRONG>curscr</STRONG>.
+
+
+</PRE><H3><a name="h3-The-Standard-Screen">The Standard Screen</a></H3><PRE>
+ Upon initializing curses, a default window called <STRONG>stdscr</STRONG>, which is the
+ size of the terminal screen, is created. Many curses functions use
+ this window.
+
+
+</PRE><H2><a name="h2-NOTES">NOTES</a></H2><PRE>
+ The curses library is initialized using either <STRONG><A HREF="curs_initscr.3x.html">initscr(3x)</A></STRONG>, or
+ <STRONG><A HREF="curs_initscr.3x.html">newterm(3x)</A></STRONG>.
+
+ If <STRONG>curses</STRONG> is configured to use separate curses/terminfo libraries, most
+ of these variables reside in the curses library.
+
+
+</PRE><H2><a name="h2-PORTABILITY">PORTABILITY</a></H2><PRE>
+ ESCDELAY and TABSIZE are extensions, not provided in most other imple-
+ mentations of curses.
+
+ ESCDELAY is an extension in AIX curses:
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> In AIX, the units for ESCDELAY are <EM>fifths</EM> of a millisecond.
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> The default value for AIX's ESCDELAY is 0.1 seconds.
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> AIX also enforces a limit of 10,000 seconds for ESCDELAY; this im-
+ plementation currently has no upper limit.
+
+ This implementation has long used ESCDELAY with units of milliseconds,
+ making it impossible to be completely compatible with AIX. Likewise,
+ most users have either decided to override the value, or rely upon its
+ default value.
+
+
+</PRE><H2><a name="h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></H2><PRE>
+ <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">curses(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="curs_opaque.3x.html">curs_opaque(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="curs_terminfo.3x.html">curs_terminfo(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="curs_threads.3x.html">curs_threads(3x)</A></STRONG>,
+ <STRONG><A HREF="term_variables.3x.html">term_variables(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>.