X-Git-Url: https://ncurses.scripts.mit.edu/?a=blobdiff_plain;ds=sidebyside;f=announce.html.in;h=84d5bbe127c71d06ad79302568a646c2659f9800;hb=2c829dd4faf4c7933e06804793e84079300e34e9;hp=82079c368c753af8b21f761ab0ca21e303288c5e;hpb=55ccd2b959766810cf7db8d1c4462f338ce0afc8;p=ncurses.git
diff --git a/announce.html.in b/announce.html.in
index 82079c36..84d5bbe1 100644
--- a/announce.html.in
+++ b/announce.html.in
@@ -1,6 +1,33 @@
@@ -42,274 +69,299 @@ the GNU distribution site
Release Notes
-This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 through 5.4;
+This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 through 5.5;
very few applications will require recompilation, depending on the platform.
-These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.4 release.
+These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.5 release.
Interface changes:
New features and improvements:
- library
-
- - environment variable NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS supports
- miscellaneous terminal emulators which ignore alternate
- character set escape sequences when in UTF-8 mode.
-
-
- modify initialization of key lookup table so that if an extended
- capability (tic -x) string is defined, and its name begins with 'k',
- ncurses will automatically treat it as a key.
+
+ - support hashed databases for the terminal descriptions.
+ This uses the Berkeley database, has been tested for
+ several versions on different platforms.
+
+
- add
use_legacy_coding()
function to support
+ lynx's font-switching feature.
+
+ - add extension
nofilter()
, to cancel a prior
+ filter()
call.
+
+ - add/install a package config script, e.g.,
+
ncurses5-config
or
+ ncursesw5-config
, according to
+ configuration options.
+
+ - provide ifdef for
NCURSES_NOMACROS
which
+ suppresses most macro definitions from curses.h, i.e.,
+ where a macro is defined to override a function to improve
+ performance.
+
+ - make ifdef's consistent in
curses.h
for the
+ extended colors so the header file can be used for the
+ normal curses library. The header file installed for
+ extended colors is a variation of the wide-character
+ configuration.
+
+ - improve
tgetstr()
by making the return value
+ point into the user's buffer, if provided.
+
+ - add ifdef's allowing ncurses to be built with
+
tparm()
using either varargs (the existing
+ status), or using a fixed-parameter list (to match X/Open).
+
+ - widen the test for xterm
kmous
a little to
+ allow
for other
+ strings than "\E[M", e.g., for xterm-sco
+ functionality in xterm.
+
+ - modify
wgetnstr()
to return
+ KEY_RESIZE
if a sigwinch occurs.
+
+ - move prototypes for wide-character trace functions from
+ curses.tail to curses.wide to avoid accidental reference to
+ those if
_XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED
is defined
+ without ensuring that <wchar.h> is included.
+
+ - change the way shared libraries (other than libtool) are
+ installed. Rather than copying the build-tree's libraries,
+ link the shared objects into the install directory. This
+ makes the
--with-rpath
option work except with
+ $(DESTDIR)
.
+
+ - several improvements for rendering in hpterm. These are
+ only available if the library is configured using
+
--enable-xmc-glitch
.
+
+ - Add
NCURSES_NO_HARD_TABS
and
+ NCURSES_NO_MAGIC_COOKIE
environment variables
+ to allow runtime suppression of the related hard-tabs and
+ xmc-glitch features.
+
- - change GPM initialization, using dl library to load it
- dynamically at runtime.
-
-
- form, menu and panel libraries support debug-tracing.
-
-
+ - programs:
+
+ - add new test programs: chgat.c, demo_altkeys.c,
+ echochar.c, foldkeys.c, movewindow.c, redraw.c, (noting
+ that existing test programs also were modified to test
+ additional features).
+
+
- modify tack to test extended capability function-key
+ strings.
+
+
- modify toe to access termcap data, e.g., via
cgetent()
+ functions, or as a text file if those are not available.
+
+ - improve infocmp/tic
-f
option formatting.
+
+ - add
toe -a
option, to show all databases.
+ This uses new private interfaces in the ncurses library for
+ iterating through the list of databases.
+
+ - modify
MKfallback.sh
to use
+ tic -x
when constructing fallback tables to
+ allow extended capabilities to be retrieved from a fallback entry.
+
+
+ - terminal database
+
+ - add terminfo entries for xfce terminal (xfce) and multi gnome terminal (mgt)
+
- add nsterm-16color entry
+
- updated mlterm terminfo entry
+
- add kon, kon2 and jfbterm terminfo entry
+
- remove invis capability from klone+sgr, mainly used by linux entry, since it does not really do this
+
- add ka2, kb1, kb3, kc2 to vt220-keypad as an extension
+
- add shifted up/down arrow codes to xterm-new as kind/kri strings
+
- add hpterm-color terminfo entry
+
- add 256color variants of terminfo entries for programs which are reported to implement this feature
+
- correct order of use-clauses in rxvt-basic entry which made codes for f1-f4 vt100-style rather than vt220-style.
+
+
+Major bug fixes:
+
+ - correct a typo in configure
--with-bool
option for the
+ case where --without-cxx
is used.
- - add NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html by Pradeep Padala
- (see http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/).
+
- move assignment from environment variable
ESCDELAY
+ from initscr()
down to newterm()
so the
+ environment variable affects timeouts for terminals opened with
+ newterm() as well.
- - programs:
+
- modify
werase
to clear multicolumn characters that
+ extend into a derived window.
- - infocmp:
-
- - The -i option now matches 8-bit controls against its table
- entries, e.g., so it can analyze the xterm-8bit entry.
+
- modify
wchgat()
to mark updated cells as changed so a
+ refresh will repaint those cells.
- - add "-x" option to infocmp like tic's "-x", for use in "-F"
- comparisons. This modifies infocmp to only report extended
- capabilities if the -x option is given, making this more
- consistent with tic. Some scripts may break, since infocmp
- previous gave this information without an option.
+
- correct logic in
wadd_wch()
and
+ wecho_wch()
, which did not guard against passing the
+ multi-column attribute into a call on waddch()
, e.g.,
+ using data returned by win_wch()
-
+ - fix redrawing of windows other than
stdscr
using
+ wredrawln()
by touching the corresponding rows in
+ curscr
.
- - tic:
+
- reduce memory leaks in repeated calls to
tgetent()
by
+ remembering the last TERMINAL*
value allocated to hold
+ the corresponding data and freeing that if the
+ tgetent()
result buffer is the same as the previous
+ call.
-
+ - modify
read_termtype()
so the term_names
+ data is always allocated as part of the str_table
, a
+ better fix for a memory leak.
- - modify termcap-parsing to retain 2-character aliases at the
- beginning of an entry if the "-x" option is used in tic.
+
- fix
wins_nwstr(),
which did not handle single-column
+ non-8bit codes.
- - filter out long extended names when translating to termcap
- format. Only two characters are permissible for termcap
- capability names.
+
- modify
wbkgrnd()
to avoid clearing the
+ A_CHARTEXT
attribute bits since those record the state
+ of multicolumn characters.
- - correct translation of "%%" in terminfo format to termcap,
- e.g., using "tic -C".
+
- improve
SIGWINCH
handling by postponing its effect
+ during newterm()
, etc., when allocating screens.
- - modify the "-c -v" options to ignore delays when comparing
- strings. Also modify it to ignore a canceled sgr string,
- e.g., for terminals which cannot properly combine attributes
- in one control sequence.
+
- remove 970913 feature for copying subwindows as they are moved in
+
mvwin()
.
- - add a check for improperly ended strings, i.e., where a
- following line begins in column 1.
+
- add checks in
waddchnstr()
and
+ wadd_wchnstr()
to stop copying when a null character
+ is found.
- - add a check in tic for terminfo entries having an sgr0 but no
- sgr string. This confuses Tru64 and HPUX curses when combined
- with color, e.g., making them leave line-drawing characters in
- odd places.
+
- add some checks to ensure current position is within scrolling
+ region before scrolling on a new line.
-
- add check (with debug configuration) that provides about the
- runtime changes that would be made to sgr0 for termcap
- applications.
+
- add a workaround to ACS mapping to allow applications such as
+ test/blue.c to use the "PC ROM" characters by masking them with
+ A_ALTCHARSET. This worked up til 5.5, but was lost in the revision
+ of legacy coding.
+
-
+Portability:
+
+ - configure script:
+
+ - new options:
+
-
- tset:
+
- --with-hashed-db
+
- Use Berkeley hashed database for storing terminfo data rather than storing
+ each compiled entry in a separate binary file within a directory
+ tree.
-
+ - --without-dlsym
+
- Do not use
dlsym()
to load GPM dynamically.
- - add -c and -w options to allow user to suppress ncurses'
- resizing of the terminal emulator window in the special case
- where it is not able to detect the true size.
+
- --with-valgrind
+
- Simplify building for testing with valgrind.
-
+ - --enable-wgetch-events
+
- Compile with experimental wgetch-events code.
-
-Major bug fixes:
-
+ - --enable-signed-char
+
- Store booleans in "signed char" rather than "char".
-
- improve logic in tgetent() which adjusts the termcap "me" string
- to work with ISO-2022 string used in xterm-new.
- This is a feature that was incompletely implemented in ncurses 5.3.
- ncurses attempts to provide termcap clients with the portion of
- the sgr0 (termcap "me") string that does not reset line-drawing.
+
-
- cells in the WINDOW which are continuations of a multicolumn
- character are encoded differently, making repainting more
- reliable.
+
- improved options:
+
-
- amend change to setupterm() in ncurses 5.4 (20030405) which would
- reuse the value of cur_term if the same output was selected. This
- now reuses it only when setupterm() is called from tgetent(),
- which has no notion of separate SCREENs. Note that tgetent() must
- be called after initscr() or newterm() to use this feature.
+
- --disable-largefile
+
- make the option work both ways.
-
- make setcchar() now works when its wchar_t* parameter is
- pointing to a string which contains more data than can be converted.
+
- --with-gpm
+
- The option now accepts a parameter,
+ i.e., the name of the dynamic GPM library to load via
+
dlopen()
- - win_wchnstr() now works for more than one cell.
+
- --disable-symlinks
+
- The option now allows one to
+ disable
symlink()
in tic
even when
+ link()
does not work.
- - resizeterm() now processes all levels of window hierarchy.
+
-
- disable GPM mouse support when $TERM happens to be prefixed with
- "xterm". Gpm_Open() would otherwise assert that it can deal with
- mouse events in this case.
+
- - add SP->_screen_acs_map[], used to ensure that mapping of missing
- line-drawing characters is handled properly. For example, ACS_DARROW
- is absent from xterm-new, and it was coincidentally displayed the
- same as ACS_BTEE.
+
- other configure/build issues:
- remove special case for
+ Darwin in
CF_XOPEN_SOURCE
configure macro.
-
+ - add configure check to ensure that
SIGWINCH
is
+ defined on platforms such as OS X which exclude that when
+ _XOPEN_SOURCE,
etc., are defined
-Portability:
-
- - configure script:
-
- - new options:
-
- - --enable-largefile
-
- set compiler and linker flags to use largefile support.
+
- use ld's
-search_paths_first
option on Darwin
+ to work around odd search rules on that platform.
- - --enable-ext-colors
-
- Allow encoding of 256 foreground
- and background colors, e.g., with the xterm-256color or
- xterm-88color terminfo entries.
- This requires ABI 6 because it changes the size of cchar_t.
+
- improve ifdef's for
_POSIX_VDISABLE
in tset to
+ work with Mac OS X.
- - --enable-ext-mouse
-
- This defines NCURSES_MOUSE_VERSION 2, and modifies the encoding of
- mouse events to support wheel mice, which may transmit buttons
- 4 and 5. This works with xterm and similar terminal
- emulators.
- This requires ABI 6 because it changes the encoding of
- mouse events.
+
- modify configure script to ensure that if the C compiler is
+ used rather than the loader in making shared libraries, the
+
$(CFLAGS)
variable is also used.
- - --with-chtype
-
- overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of chtype
+
- use
${CC}
rather than ${LD}
in
+ shared library rules for IRIX64, Solaris to help ensure
+ that initialization sections are provided for extra linkage
+ requirements, e.g., of C++ applications.
- - --with-mmask-t
-
- overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of mmask_t
+
- improve some shared-library configure scripting for Linux,
+ FreeBSD and NetBSD to make
+
--with-shlib-version
work.
- - --without-xterm-new
-
- Installs "xterm-old" as the "xterm" entry of the terminfo
- database.
+
- split up dependency of
names.c
and
+ codes.c
in ncurses/Makefile
to
+ work with parallel make.
-
+ - modify
MKlib_gen.sh
to change
+ preprocessor-expanded _Bool
back to bool
.
- - The --with-termlib option now accepts a value which sets
- the name of the terminfo library. This would allow a packager to
- build libtinfow.so renamed to coincide with libtinfo.so
+
- modify
progs/Makefile.in
to make
+ tput init
work properly with cygwin,
+ i.e., do not pass a .exe
in the reference
+ string used in check_aliases.
+
- - fixes/improvements for cross-compiling:
+
- library:
+
+ - ignore wide-acs line-drawing characters that
+
wcwidth()
claims are not one-column. This is
+ a workaround for Solaris' broken locale support.
-
- - suppress $suffix in misc/run_tic.sh when cross-compiling.
- This allows cross-compiles to use the host's tic program to
- handle the "make install.data" step.
+
- reduce name-pollution in
term.h
by removing
+ #define
's for HAVE_xxx symbols.
- - correct BUILD_CPPFLAGS substitution in ncurses/Makefile.in, to allow
- cross-compiling from a separate directory tree.
+
- fix
#ifdef
in c++/internal.h
for
+ QNX 6.1
+
-
+ - test programs:
- modify
test/configure
script
+ to allow building test programs with PDCurses/X11.
-
+ - modified test programs to allow some to work with NetBSD
+ curses. Several do not because NetBSD curses implements a
+ subset of X/Open curses, and also lacks much of SVr4
+ additions. But it is enough for comparison.
-
- library:
-
+ - improved
test/configure
to build test/ncurses
+ on HPUX 11 using the vendor curses.
- - add ifdef's for _LP64 in curses.h to avoid using wasteful
- 64-bits for chtype and mmask_t, but add configure option
- --disable-lp64 in case anyone used that configuration.
-
-
- modify C++ binding to use some C internal functions to make it
- compile properly on Solaris (and other platforms).
-
-
- remove check in newwin() that prevents allocating windows that
- extend beyond the screen (Solaris does this).
-
-
- check for
nl_langinfo(CODESET)
, use it if available.
- This replaces ad hoc tests of environment variables to
- check if the terminal is setup for UTF-8 encoding.
- Applications which do not call setlocale()
- should be corrected, to make them work properly with
- UTF-8 encoding.
-
- In particular, applications which assume (and
- do not call setlocale()
) that
- Latin-1 codes are printable will no longer work in
- a UTF-8 locale since the ad hoc check of environment
- variables to see if the locale was UTF-8 is not used
- when nl_langinfo(CODESET)
is available.
-
- - use setlocale() to query the program's current locale rather
- than using getenv(). This supports applications which rely
- upon legacy treatment of 8-bit characters when the locale is
- not initialized.
-
-
+ - change configure script to produce
+
test/Makefile
from data file.
+
Features of Ncurses
@@ -338,14 +390,15 @@ The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over SVr4:
- The API is 8-bit clean and base-level conformant with the X/OPEN curses
specification, XSI curses (that is, it implements all BASE level features,
-but not all EXTENDED features). Most EXTENDED-level features not directly
-concerned with wide-character support are implemented, including many
-function calls not supported under SVr4 curses (but portability of all
+and most EXTENDED features).
+It includes many function calls not supported under SVr4 curses
+(but portability of all
calls is documented so you can use the SVr4 subset only).
- Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost corner
of the screen if your terminal has an insert-character capability.
- Ada95 and C++ bindings.
-
- Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and OS/2 console windows.
+
- Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm
+and FreeBSD and OS/2 console windows.
- Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm package.
- The function
wresize()
allows you to resize windows, preserving
their data.
@@ -357,7 +410,7 @@ and define_key()
allow
you to better control the use of function keys,
e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE,
or by defining more than one control sequence to map to a given key code.
- - Support for 16-color terminals, such as aixterm and XFree86 xterm.
+
- Support for 16-color terminals, such as aixterm and modern xterm.
- Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now features a
cursor-local-movement computation more efficient than either BSD's
or System V's.
@@ -474,7 +527,8 @@ as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support alone:
- minicom
- terminal emulator
-http://www.netsonic.fi/~walker/minicom.html
+
+http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/
- vile
- vi-like-emacs
@@ -524,10 +578,11 @@ on them, please join the ncurses list.
Other Related Resources
The distribution provides a newer version of the terminfo-format
-terminal description file maintained by
+terminal description file once maintained by
Eric Raymond .
Unlike the older version, the termcap and terminfo data are provided
-in the same file.
+in the same file, and provides several user-definable extensions
+beyond the X/Open specification.
You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics
not covered in the terminfo file at