-
- Announcing ncurses 5.4
+ Announcing ncurses 5.5
The ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation of
curses in System V Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo format,
enhancements over BSD curses.
In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared that he
- 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.
+ considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the keepers of Unix
+ releases such as BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to switch over to ncurses.
The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It has been in use for
some time with OpenBSD as the system curses library, and on FreeBSD
Release Notes
- This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 and
- 5.3; very few applications will require recompilation, depending on
- the platform. These are the highlights from the change-log since
- ncurses 5.3 release.
+ This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0
+ through 5.4; very few applications will require recompilation,
+ depending on the platform. These are the highlights from the
+ change-log since ncurses 5.4 release.
Interface changes:
- * add the remaining functions for X/Open curses wide-character
- support.
- + pecho_wchar()
- + slk_wset()
- These are only available if the library is configured using the
- --enable-widec option.
- * write getyx() and related 2-return macros in terms of getcury(),
- getcurx(), etc.
- * simplify ifdef for bool declaration in curses.h
- * modify ifdef's in curses.h that disabled use of __attribute__()
- for g++, since recent versions implement the cases which ncurses
- uses.
- * add key_defined() function, to tell which keycode a string is
- bound to.
+ * terminfo installs "xterm-new" as "xterm" entry rather than
+ "xterm-old" (aka xterm-r6).
+ * terminfo data is installed using the tic -x option (few systems
+ still use ncurses 4.2).
+ * modify C++ binding to work with newer C++ compilers by providing
+ initializers and using modern casts. Old-style header names are
+ still used in this release to allow compiling with not-so-old
+ compilers.
+ * modify parameter type in c++ binding for insch() and mvwinsch() to
+ be consistent with underlying ncurses library (was char, is
+ chtype).
+ * change NCursesWindow::err_handler() to a virtual function.
+ * form and menu libraries now work with wide-character data.
+ Applications which bypassed the form library and manipulated the
+ FIELD.buf data directly will not work properly with libformw,
+ since that no longer points to an array of char. The
+ set_field_buffer() and field_buffer() functions translate to/from
+ the actual field data.
+ * add symbol to curses.h which can be used to suppress include of
+ stdbool.h, e.g.,
+ #define NCURSES_ENABLE_STDBOOL_H 0
+ #include <curses.h>
+
+ * change SP->_current_attr to a pointer, adjust ifdef's to ensure
+ that libtinfo.so and libtinfow.so have the same ABI. The reason
+ for this is that the corresponding data which belongs to the
+ upper-level ncurses library has a different size in each model.
+ * winnstr() now returns multibyte character strings for the
+ wide-character configuration.
+ * assume_default_colors() no longer requires that
+ use_default_colors() be called first.
+ * data_ahead() now works with wide-characters.
+ * slk_set() and slk_wset() now accept and store multibyte or
+ multicolumn characters.
+ * start_color() now returns OK if colors have already been started.
+ start_color() also returns ERR if it cannot allocate memory.
+ * pair_content() now returns -1 for consistency with init_pair() if
+ it corresponds to the default-color.
+ * unctrl() now returns null if its parameter does not correspond to
+ an unsigned char.
New features and improvements:
* library
- + implement logic in lib_mouse.c to handle position reports
- which are generated when XFree86 xterm is initialized with
- private modes 1002 or 1003. These are returned to the
- application as the REPORT_MOUSE_POSITION mask, which was not
- implemented.
- + modify soft-key initialization to use A_REVERSE if A_STANDOUT
- would not be shown when colors are used, i.e., if ncv#1 is
- set in the terminfo as is done in "screen".
- + add configure option for FreeBSD sysmouse, --with-sysmouse,
- and implement library support for that.
+ + 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.
+ + change GPM initialization, using dl library to load it
+ dynamically at runtime.
+ + form, menu and panel libraries support debug-tracing.
+ * add NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html by Pradeep Padala (see
+ http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/).
* programs:
- + tack:
- o allow it to run from fallback terminfo data.
- o reset colors after each color test, correct a place
- where exit_standout_mode was used instead of
- exit_attribute_mode.
- o improve bce test by making it set colors other than
- black on white.
- + tic:
- o handle a case where an entry has no description, and
- capabilities begin on the same line as the entry name.
- o allow a terminfo entry with a leading 2-character name.
- o improved warnings when suppressing items to fit in
- termcap's 1023-byte limit.
- o add check for multiple "tc=" clauses in a termcap.
- o correct logic for resolving "use=" clauses allow infocmp
- and tic to show cancelled capabilities.
- o check for incomplete line-drawing character mapping.
- o check for missing/empty/illegal terminfo name.
- + tput:
- o modify tput to use the same parameter analysis as
- tparm() does, to provide for user-defined strings, e.g.,
- for xterm title, a corresponding capability might be
- title=\E]2;%p1%s^G,
- + tset:
- o use the system's default values for CKILL and other
- default control characters.
- o correct interchanged defaults for kill and interrupt
- characters, which caused it to report unnecessarily.
+ * infocmp:
+ + The -i option now matches 8-bit controls against its table
+ entries, e.g., so it can analyze the xterm-8bit entry.
+ + 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.
+ * tic:
+ + modify termcap-parsing to retain 2-character aliases at the
+ beginning of an entry if the "-x" option is used in tic.
+ + filter out long extended names when translating to termcap
+ format. Only two characters are permissible for termcap
+ capability names.
+ + correct translation of "%%" in terminfo format to termcap,
+ e.g., using "tic -C".
+ + 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.
+ + add a check for improperly ended strings, i.e., where a
+ following line begins in column 1.
+ + 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 check (with debug configuration) that provides about the
+ runtime changes that would be made to sgr0 for termcap
+ applications.
+ * tset:
+ + 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.
Major bug fixes:
- * prevent recursion in wgetch() via wgetnstr() if the connection
- cannot be switched between cooked/raw modes because it is not a
- TTY.
- * correct a case in _nc_remove_string(), used by define_key(), to
- avoid infinite loop if the given string happens to be a substring
- of other strings which are assigned to keys.
- * modify logic of acsc to use the original character if no mapping
- is defined, rather than a null.
- * several improvements for handling multi-cell display of wide
- characters.
- + modify setcchar() to allow converting control characters to
- complex characters.
- + correct handling of multibyte characters in waddch_literal()
- which force wrapping because they are started too late on the
- line.
- + modify setcchar() to allow for wchar_t input strings that
- have more than one spacing character.
- * other fixes for wide-character support:
- + rewrote lib_acs.c to allow PutAttrChar() to decide how to
- render alternate-characters, i.e., to work with Linux console
- and UTF-8 locale.
- + implement a workaround so that line-drawing works with
- screen's crippled UTF-8 support (tested with 3.9.13). This
- only works with the wide-character support (--enable-widec);
- the normal library will simply suppress line-drawing when
- running in a UTF-8 locale in screen.
- + corrections to lib_get_wstr.c:
- o null-terminate buffer passed to setcchar(), which
- occasionally failed.
- o map special characters such as erase- and
- kill-characters into key-codes so those will work as
- expected even if they are not mentioned in the terminfo.
- * modify setupterm() to check if the terminfo and terminal-modes
- have already been read. This ensures that it does not reinvoke
- def_prog_mode() when an application calls more than one function,
- such as tgetent() and initscr().
- * fix form_driver() cases for REQ_CLR_EOF, REQ_CLR_EOL,
- REQ_DEL_CHAR, REQ_DEL_PREV and REQ_NEW_LINE, which did not ensure
- the cursor was at the editing position before making
- modifications.
- * correct keybound(), which reported definitions in the wrong table,
- i.e., the list of definitions which are disabled by keyok().
- * fixes related to safe_sprintf.c:
- + correct an allocation size in safe_sprintf.c for the "*"
- format code.
- + correct safe_sprintf.c to not return a null pointer if the
- format happens to be an empty string.
- + make return value from _nc_printf_string() consistent.
- Before, depending on whether --enable-safe-sprintf was used,
- it might not be cached for reallocating.
- * other low-level improvements to the optimization code include:
- + if the output is a socket or other non-tty device, use 1
- millisecond for the cost in mvcur; previously it was 9
- milliseconds because the baudrate was not known.
- + modify lib_getch.c to avoid recursion via wgetnstr() when the
- input is not a tty and consequently mode-changes do not work.
- + fix several places in tack/pad.c which tested and used the
- parameter- and parameterless strings inconsistently.
- + change several tputs() calls in scrolling code to use putp(),
- to enable padding which may be needed for some terminals.
- + improve mvcur() by checking if it is safe to move when video
- attributes are set (msgr), and if not, reset/restore
- attributes within that function rather than doing it
- separately in the GoTo() function in tty_update.c.
- + use tputs() rather than putp() in a few cases in tty_update.c
- since the corresponding delays are proportional to the number
- of lines affected: repeat_char, clr_eos,
- change_scroll_region.
- * correct line/column reference in adjust_window(), needed to make
- special windows such as curscr track properly when resizing.
- * fix a potential recursion between napms() and _nc_timed_wait()
- * rewrote lib_insch.c, combining it with lib_insstr.c so both handle
- tab and other control characters consistently.
- * do not try to open gpm mouse driver if standard output is not a
- tty; the gpm library does not make this check.
+ * 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.
+ * 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.
+ * make setcchar() now works when its wchar_t* parameter is pointing
+ to a string which contains more data than can be converted.
+ * win_wchnstr() now works for more than one cell.
+ * 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.
Portability:
* configure script:
+ new options:
- --with-abi-version option.
- addresses platforms where packagers have diverged
- from ncurses ABI numbering.
-
- --with-manpage-format=catonly
- addresses behavior of BSDI, allow install of
- man+cat files on NetBSD, whose behavior has
- diverged by requiring both to be present.
-
- --with-manpage-aliases
- extends "--with-manpage-aliases" to provide the
- option of generating ".so" files rather than
- symbolic links for manpage aliases.
-
- --with-rel-version
- workaround to force libtool on Darwin generate the
- "same" library names as with the "--with-shared"
- option. The Darwin ld program does not work well
- with a zero as the minor-version value.
-
- --with-trace
- simplifies defining TRACE to incorporate trace() in
- libraries.
-
+ --enable-largefile
+ set compiler and linker flags to use largefile
+ support.
+
+ --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.
+
+ --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.
+
+ --with-chtype
+ overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of chtype
+
+ --with-mmask-t
+ overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of mmask_t
+
+ --without-xterm-new
+ Installs "xterm-old" as the "xterm" entry of the
+ terminfo database.
+
+ + 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
+ fixes/improvements for cross-compiling:
- o allow BUILD_CC and related configure script variables to
- be overridden from the environment.
- o use AC_CHECK_TOOL to get proper values for AR and LD for
- cross compiling.
- o use $cross_compiling variable in configure script rather
- than comparing $host_alias and $target alias, since
- "host" is traditionally misused in autoconf to refer to
- the target platform.
- o modify run_tic.in to avoid using wrong shared libraries
- when cross-compiling.
- + fixes for Mac OS X:
- o fix a redefinition of $RANLIB in the configure script
- when libtool is used.
- o modify MKlib_gen.sh to avoid passing "#" tokens through
- the C preprocessor. This works around Mac OS X's
- preprocessor, which insists on adding a blank on each
- side of the token.
- + workarounds for broken tools:
- o add configure check for wchar_t and wint_t types, rather
- than rely on preprocessor definitions. Also work around
- for gcc fixinclude bug which creates a shadow copy of
- curses.h if it sees these symbols apparently typedef'd.
- o modify configure script to omit -Winline for gcc 3.3,
- since that feature is broken.
- o several script fixes to work around the ironically named
- POSIXLY_CORRECT feature of GNU sed 4.0.
- o modify configure script to avoid using "head -1", which
- does not work if POSIXLY_CORRECT (sic) is set.
- o update configure script to reflect fix for
- AC_PROG_GCC_TRADITIONAL, which is broken in autoconf
- 2.5x for Mac OS X 10.2.3.
- o repair check for missing C++ compiler, which is broken
- in autoconf 2.5x by hardcoding it to g++.
- + corrected ifdef's relating to configure check for wchar_t,
- etc.
- + remove configure script check to allow -Wconversion for older
- versions of gcc
- + modify configure script to accommodate libtool 1.5, as well
- as add an parameter to the "--with-libtool" option which can
- specify the pathname of libtool.
- + change several sed scripts to avoid using "\+" since it is
- not a BRE (basic regular expression). One instance caused
- terminfo.5 to be misformatted on FreeBSD.
- + use '%' as sed substitute delimiter in run_tic script to
- avoid problems with pathname delimiters such as ':' and '@'.
- + add -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500 if needed when configuring with
- "--enable-widec", to get mbstate_t declaration on HPUX 11.11.
+ o 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.
+ o correct BUILD_CPPFLAGS substitution in
+ ncurses/Makefile.in, to allow cross-compiling from a
+ separate directory tree.
* library:
- + adjust include-options in CF_ETIP_DEFINES to avoid missing
- ncurses_dll.h, fixing special definitions that may be needed
- for etip.h.
- + modify CF_LIB_SUFFIX for Itanium releases of HP-UX, which use
- a ".so" suffix.
- + improve ifdef's to guard against redefinition of wchar_t and
- wint_t in curses.h.
- + remove an #undef for KEY_EVENT from curses.tail used in the
- experimental NCURSES_WGETCH_EVENTS feature. The #undef
- confuses Debian dpkg's build script.
+ + 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.
Features of Ncurses
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