- This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0;
- very few applications will require recompilation, depending on the
- platform. These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses
- 5.0 release.
-
- Interface changes:
- * made the extended terminal capabilities
- (configure --enable-tcap-names) a standard feature (though the
- configure script can disable it, it is built by default).
- * removed the trace() function and related trace support from the
- production library. This is the only interface change that may
- cause problems with existing applications linked to shared
- libraries, since not all platforms use the minor version number.
- * explicitly initialized to zero several data items which were
- implicitly initialized, e.g., cur_term. If not explicitly
- initialized, their storage type is C (common), and causes problems
- linking on some platforms.
- * modified curses.h.in, undef'ing some symbols to avoid conflict
- with C++ STL.
-
- New features:
- * added a new extension, assume_default_colors() to provide better
- control over the use of default colors. This is the principal
- visible difference between ncurses 5.1 and preceding versions. The
- new extension allows an application to specify what colors pair 0
- uses.
- NOTE: Pair 0 defaults to white on black unless you have invoked
- use_default_colors() or set it via assume_default_colors(). An
- application that calls start_colors() without setting the
- background color will consistently have a black background no
- matter what color your terminal's background actually is.
- * made several fixes to the terminfo-to-termcap conversion, and have
- been using the generated termcaps without further hand-tuning.
- This builds on the extension use_extended_names() by adding
- "obsolete" termcap strings to terminfo.src
- + modified tic so that if extended names (i.e.,
- configure --enable-tcap-names) are active, then tic -x will
- also write "obsolete" capabilities that are present in the
- terminfo source.
- + added screen's AX capability (for ECMA SGR 39 and 49) to
- applicable terminfo entries, use presence of this as a check
- for a small improvement in setting default colors.
- + add -a option to tic and infocmp, which retains commented-out
- capabilities during source translation/comparison, e.g.,
- captoinfo and infotocap.
- * implemented limited support for UTF-8, useful with XFree86 xterm:
- + if the configure --enable-widec option is given, append 'w'
- to names of the generated libraries (e.g., libncursesw.so) to
- avoid conflict with existing ncurses libraries.
- + add a simple UTF-8 output driver to the experimental
- wide-character support. If any of the environment variables
- LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE or LANG contain the string "UTF-8", this
- driver will be used to translate the output to UTF-8.
- + modified view.c to make a rudimentary viewer of UTF-8 text.
- * modify raw() and noraw() to clear/restore IEXTEN flag which
- affects stty lnext on systems such as FreeBSD
- * reordered tests during mouse initialization to allow for gpm to
- run in xterm, or for xterm to be used under OS/2 EMX. Also dropped
- test for $DISPLAY in favor of the terminfo capability kmous=\E[M
- or if $TERM environment variable contains "xterm".
- * added configure option --with-manpage-symlinks, which provides for
- fully indexing manpage entries by making symbolic links for the
- aliases.
- * changed unctrl() to render C1 characters (128-159) as ~@, ~A, etc.
- * add experimental configure option --enable-colorfgbg to check for
- $COLORTERM variable as set by rxvt/aterm/Eterm.
- * made the infocmp -F option less verbose.
- * dropped support for gnat 3.10 (gnat 3.12 is current).
-
- Major bug fixes:
- * modified infocmp -e, -E options to ensure that generated
- fallback.c type for Booleans agrees with term.h
- * documented a special case of incompatiblity between ncurses 4.2
- and 5.0, added a section for this in INSTALL.
- * corrected tests for file-descriptors in OS/2 EMX mouse support. A
- negative value could be used by FD_SET, causing the select() call
- to wait indefinitely.
- * made 'tput flash' work properly for xterm by flushing output in
- delay_output() when using napms(), and modifying xterm's terminfo
- to specify no padding character. Otherwise, xterm's reported baud
- rate could mislead ncurses into producing too few padding
- characters.
- * modified lib_addch.c to allow repeated update to the lower-right
- corner, rather than displaying only the first character written
- until the cursor is moved. Recent versions of SVr4 curses can
- update the lower-right corner, and behave this way.
- * modified echo() behavior of getch() to match Solaris curses for
- carriage return and backspace (reported by Neil Zanella).
- * corrected offsets used for subwindows in wresize()
- * modified configure script so AC_MSG_ERROR is temporarily defined
- to a warning in AC_PROG_CXX to make it recover from a missing C++
- compiler without requiring user to add --without-cxx option
- * corrected logic in lib_twait.c as used by lib_mouse.c for GPM
- mouse support when poll() is used rather than select().
- * made several fixes for buffer overflows, unchecked recursion,
- improvements in performance, etc. See the NEWS file for details.
+ This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0
+ through 5.8; very few applications will require recompilation,
+ depending on the platform. These are the highlights from the
+ change-log since ncurses 5.8 release.
+
+ This is a bug-fix release, correcting a small number of urgent
+ problems in the ncurses library from the 5.8 release.
+
+ It also improves the Ada95 binding:
+ * fixes a longstanding portability problem with its use of the
+ [3]set_field_type function. Because that function uses
+ variable-length argument lists, its interface with gnat does not
+ work with certain platforms.
+ * improves configurability and portability, particularly when built
+ separately from the main ncurses tree. The 5.8 release introduced
+ scripts which can be used to construct separate tarballs for the
+ Ada95 and ncurses examples.
+ Those were a proof of concept. For the 5.9 release, those scripts
+ are augmented with rpm- and dpkg-scripts used in test builds
+ against a variety of gnat- and system ncurses versions as old as
+ gnat 3.15 and ncurses 5.4 (see snapshots and systems tested
+ [4]here.
+ * additional improvements were made for portability of the ncurses
+ examples, adding rpm- and dpkg-scripts for test-builds. See
+ [5]this page for snapshots and other information.
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