+.SH PORTABILITY
+The \fBCCHARW_MAX\fP symbol is specific to ncurses.
+X/Open Curses does not provide details for the layout of the \fBcchar_t\fP
+structure.
+It tells what data are stored in it:
+.bP
+a spacing character (\fBwchar_t\fP, i.e., 32-bits).
+.bP
+non-spacing characters (again, \fBwchar_t\fP's).
+.bP
+attributes (at least 16 bits, inferred from the various ACS- and WACS-flags).
+.bP
+color pair (at least 16 bits, inferred from the \fBunsigned short\fP type).
+.PP
+The non-spacing characters are optional,
+in the sense that zero or more may be stored in a \fBcchar_t\fP.
+XOpen/Curses specifies a limit:
+.RS 4
+.PP
+Implementations may limit the number of non-spacing characters that can be
+associated with a spacing character, provided any limit is at least 5.
+.RE
+.PP
+The Unix implementations at the time follow that limit:
+.bP
+AIX\ 4 and OSF1\ 4 use the same declaration with an array of 5 non-spacing
+characters \fIz\fP and a single spacing character \fIc\fP.
+.bP
+HP-UX\ 10 uses an opaque structure with 28 bytes,
+which is large enough for the 6 \fBwchar_t\fP values.
+.bP
+Solaris xpg4 curses uses a single array of 6 \fBwchar_t\fP values.
+.PP
+This implementation's \fBcchar_t\fP was defined in 1995
+using \fB5\fP for the total of spacing and non-spacing characters
+(\fBCCHARW_MAX\fP).
+That was probably due to a misreading of the AIX\ 4 header files,
+because the X/Open Curses document was not generally available at that time.
+Later (in 2002), this detail was overlooked when beginning to implement
+the functions using the structure.
+.PP
+In practice, even four non-spacing characters may seem enough.
+X/Open Curses documents possible uses for non-spacing characters,
+including using them for ligatures between characters
+(a feature apparently not supported by any curses implementation).
+Unicode does not limit the (analogous) number of combining characters,
+so some applications may be affected.