- The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including
- a terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), clear(1),
- tput(1), tset(1), and a termcap conversion tool captoinfo(1). Full
- manual pages are provided for the library and tools.
-
- The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at the GNU
- distribution site [1]ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses.
- It is also available at [2]ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses.
-
- Release Notes
-
- This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 and
- 5.1; very few applications will require recompilation, depending on
- the platform. These are the highlights from the change-log since
- ncurses 5.1 release.
-
- Interface changes:
- * change type of ospeed variable back to short to match its use in
- legacy applications. It was altered after ncurses 4.2 to speed_t
- to repair a type mismatch which was introduced after 1.9.4 in
- 1995. The principal users of termcap continued to use short, which
- is not the same size.
- NOTE: A few applications will have to be recompiled (about 1% of
- the programs in a typical Linux distribution, 10% of the programs
- that use ncurses). These are easy to identify with nm or strings.
- * remove a private function _nc_can_clear_with(), which was built
- with the configure --enable-expanded option but not used.
- * add several private functions (prefixed with "_nc_") for tracing
- chtype values in the debug library, and for better access and
- buffer limit checking.
-
- New features and improvements:
- * rewrote tgoto() to make it better support existing termcap
- applications which use hardcoded strings rather than obtain all of
- their information from the termcap file. If the string does not
- appear to be a terminfo string (i.e., does not refer to a "%p"
- parameter, or terminfo-style padding), and termcap support is
- configured, tgoto() will interpret it as termcap. Otherwise, as
- before, it will use tparm().
- * to ensure that the tgoto() changes work properly, added checks to
- tic which report capabilities that do not reference the expected
- number of parameters.
- * new configure script options:
- + option --disable-root-environ adds runtime checks which tell
- ncurses to disregard $TERMINFO and similar environment
- variables if the current user is root, or running
- setuid/setgid.
- + option --disable-assumed-color allows you to use the pre-5.1
- convention of default colors used for color-pair 0 to be
- configured (see assume_default_colors()).
- + implement configure script options that transform installed
- program names, e.g., --program-prefix, including the manpage
- names and cross references.
- + option --with-database allows you to specify a different
- terminfo source-file to install. On OS/2 EMX, the default is
- misc/emx.src, otherwise misc/terminfo.src
- + option --with-default-terminfo-dir allows you to specify the
- default terminfo database directory.
- + option --with-libtool allows you to build with libtool.
- NOTE: libtool uses a different notation for numbering shared
- library versions from the existing ncurses configuration.
- + option --with-manpage-tbl causes the manpages to be
- preprocessed by tbl(1) prior to installation,
- + option --without-curses-h causes the installation process to
- install curses.h as ncurses.h and make appropriate changes to
- headers and manpages.
- * modified configure script options:
- + change symbol used by the --install-prefix configure option
- from INSTALL_PREFIX to DESTDIR (the latter has become common
- usage although the name is misleading).
- + modify ld -rpath options (e.g., Linux, and Solaris) to use an
- absolute pathname for the build tree's lib directory,
- avoiding confusion with directories relative to the current
- one with the installed programs.
- + modified misc/run_tic.in to use tic -o, to eliminate
- dependency on $TERMINFO variable for installs.
- * terminfo database:
- + updated xterm terminfo entries to match XFree86 xterm patch
- #146.
- + added amiga-vnc, Matrix Orbital, and QNX qansi to
- misc/terminfo.src.
- + added os2 entry to misc/emx.src.
- + add S0 and E0 extensions to screen's terminfo entry since
- otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
- to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older versions of
- ncurses.
- * improvements to program usability:
- + modify programs to use curses_version() string to report the
- version of ncurses with which they are compiled rather than
- the NCURSES_VERSION string. The function returns the patch
- level in addition to the major and minor version numbers.
- + modify tput program so it can be renamed or invoked via a
- link as 'reset' or 'init', producing the same effect as
- tput reset or tput init.
- + add error checking to infocmp's -v and -m options to ensure
- that the option value is indeed a number.
- * improved performance:
- + replace a lookup table in lib_vidattr.c used to decode
- no_color_video with a logic expression which is faster.
-
- Major bug fixes:
- * correct manlinks.sed script introduced in ncurses 5.1 to avoid
- using ERE "\+", which is not understood by standard versions of
- sed. This happens to work with GNU sed, but is not portable, and
- was the initial motivation for this release.
- * remove "hpux10.*" case from CF_SHARED_OPTS configure script macro.
- This differed from the "hpux*" case by using reversed symbolic
- links, which made the 5.1 version not match the configuration of
- 5.0 shared libraries.
- * guard against corrupt terminfo data:
- + modify tparm() to disallow arithmetic on strings, analyze the
- varargs list to read strings as strings and numbers as
- numbers.
- + modify tparm()'s internal function spop() to treat a null
- pointer as an empty string.
- + modify parse_format() in lib_tparm.c to ignore precision if
- it is longer than 10000.
- + rewrote limit checks in lib_mvcur.c using new functions
- _nc_safe_strcat(), etc. Made other related changes to check
- lengths used for strcat() and strcpy().
- * corrections to screen optimization:
- + added special case in lib_vidattr.c to reset underline and
- standout for devices that have no sgr0 defined.
- + change handling of non_dest_scroll_region in tty_update.c to
- clear text after it is shifted in rather than before shifting
- out. Also correct row computation.
- + modify rs2 capability in xterm-r6 and similar entries where
- cursor save/restore bracketed the sequence for resetting
- video attributes. The cursor restore would undo that.
- * UTF-8 support:
- + when checking LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment
- variables for UTF-8 locale, ignore those which are set to an
- empty value, as per SUSV2.
- + encode 0xFFFD in UTF-8 with 3 bytes, not 2.
- + modify _nc_utf8_outch() to avoid sign-extension when checking
- for out-of-range value.
- * other library fixes:
- + added checks for an empty $HOME environment variable, to
- avoid retrieving terminfo descriptions from ./.terminfo .
- + change functions _nc_parse_entry() and postprocess_termcap()
- to avoid using strtok(), because it is non-reentrant.
- + initialize fds[] array to 0's in _nc_timed_wait(); apparently
- poll() only sets the revents members of that array when there
- is activity corresponding to the related file.
- + add a check for null pointer in Make_Enum_Type().
- + fix a heap problem with the c++ binding.
- + correct missing includes for <string.h> in several places,
- including the C++ binding. This is not noted by gcc unless we
- use the -fno-builtin option.
- * several fixes for tic:
- + add a check for empty buffers returned by fgets() in
- comp_scan.c next_char() function, in case tic is run on a
- non-text file (fixes a core dump).
- + modify tic to verify that its inputs are really files, in
- case someone tries to read a directory (or /dev/zero).
- + correct an uninitialized parameter to open_tempfile() in
- tic.c which made "tic -I" give an ambiguous error message
- about tmpnam.
- + correct logic in adjust_cancels(), which did not check both
- alternatives when reclassifying an extended name between
- boolean, number and string, causing an infinite loop in tic.
- * using new checks in tic for parameter counts in capability
- strings, found/fixed several errors both in the terminfo database
- and in the include/Caps file.
- + modified several terminfo capability strings, including the
- definitions for setaf, setab, in include/Caps to indicate
- that the entries are parameterized. This information is used
- to tell which strings are translated when converting to
- termcap. This fixes a problem where the generated termcap
- would contain a spurious "%p1" for the terminfo "%p1%d".
- + correct parameter counts in include/Caps for dclk as well as
- some printer-specific capabilities: csnm, defc, scs, scsd,
- smgtp, smglp.
- * various fixes for install scripts used to support configure
- --srcdir and --with-install-prefix.
- * correct several mismatches between manpage filename and ".TH"
- directives, renaming dft_fgbg.3x to default_colors.3x and
- menu_attribs.3x to menu_attributes.3x.
-
- Portability:
- * configure script:
- + newer config.guess, config.sub, including changes to support
- OS/2 EMX. The configure script for OS/2 EMX still relies on a
- patch since there is no (working) support for that platform
- in the main autoconf distribution.
- + make configure script checks on variables $GCC and $GXX
- consistently compare against 'yes' rather than test if they
- are nonnull, since either may be set to the corresponding
- name of the C or C++ compiler.
- + change configure script to use AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM rather
- than AC_CANONICAL_HOST, which means that configure --target
- will set a default program-prefix.
- + modify the check for big-core to force a couple of memory
- accesses, which may work as needed for older/less-capable
- machines (if not, there's still the explicit configure
- option).
- + modify configure test for tcgetattr() to allow for old
- implementations, e.g., on BeOS, which only defined it as a
- macro.
- + add configure check for filesystems (such as OS/2 EMX) which
- do not distinguish between upper/lowercase filenames, use
- this to fix tags rules in makefiles.
- + add MKncurses_def.sh to generate fallback definitions for
- ncurses_cfg.h, to quiet gcc -Wundef warnings, modified
- ifdef's in code to consistently use "#if" rather than
- "#ifdef".
- + change most remaining unquoted parameters of test in
- configure script to use quotes, for instance fixing a problem
- in the --disable-database option.
- + modify scripts so that "make install.data" works on OS/2 EMX.
- + modify scripts and makefiles so the Ada95 directory builds on
- OS/2 EMX.
- * library:
- + replaced case-statement in _nc_tracebits() for CSIZE with a
- table to simplify working around implementations that define
- random combinations of the related macros to zero.
- + improved OS/2 mouse support by retrying as a 2-button mouse
- if code fails to set up a 3-button mouse.
- + added private entrypoint _nc_basename(), used to consolidate
- related code in progs, as well as accommodating OS/2 EMX
- pathnames.
- + alter definition of NCURSES_CONST to make it non-empty.
- + redefine 'TEXT' in menu.h for AMIGA, since it is reported to
- have an (unspecified) symbol conflict.
- * programs:
- + modified progs/tset.c and tack/sysdep.c to build with sgttyb
- interface if neither termio or termios is available. Tested
- this with FreeBSD 2.1.5 (which does have termios - but the
- sgttyb does work).
-
- Features of Ncurses
-
- The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4)
- curses:
- * All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are
- documented).
- * Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard mapping,
- color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and automatic
- recognition of keypad and function keys.
- * An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting a stack of
- windows with backing store, is included.
- * An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting a uniform but
- flexible interface for menu programming, is included.
- * An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting data collection
- through on-screen forms, is included.
- * Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1)
- implementation are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format
- SVr4 curses uses.
- * The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo entries
- for use with less capable curses/terminfo versions such as the
- HP/UX and AIX ports.
+ A variety of improvements were made to existing programs, both new
+ features as well as options added to make the set of programs more
+ consistent.
+ * add "-l" option to test/background, to dump screen contents in a
+ form that lets different curses implementations be compared.
+ * add "@" command to test/ncurses F-test, to allow rapid jump to
+ different character pages.
+ * added enum, regex examples to test/demo_forms
+ * amend Scaled256() macro in test/picsmap.c to cover the full range
+ 0..1000
+ * corrected pathname used in Ada95 sample programs for explain.txt,
+ to work with test-packages, and used an awk script to split the
+ resulting pathname when it would be too long for a single line.
+ * ignore interrupted system-call in test/ncurses's command-line,
+ e.g., if the terminal were resized.
+ * improved ifdef's for TABSIZE variable, to help with AIX/HPUX
+ ports.
+
+ Terminal database
+
+ There are several new terminal descriptions:
+
+ alacritty, domterm, kitty, mintty, mintty-direct, ms-terminal,
+ n7900, nsterm-build309, nsterm-direct, screen5, ti703, ti707,
+ ti703-w, ti707-w vscode, vscode-direct, xterm-mono, xterm.js
+
+ There are many changes to existing terminal descriptions. Some were
+ updates to several descriptions:
+ * use ansi+rep in a dozen places
+ * add rs1 to konsole, mlterm
+ * improve several flash capabilities with trailing mandatory delays
+ * drop ich1 from rxvt-basic, Eterm and mlterm to improve
+ compatibility with old non-curses programs
+ * add/use xterm+keypad in xterm-new
+ * use xterm+sl-twm for consistency, nine places
+ * improve xm example in xterm+x11mouse and xterm+sm_1006.
+
+ while others affected specific descriptions. These were retested, to
+ take into account changes by their developers:
+
+ terminator, st
+
+ while these are specific fixes based on reviewing documentation, user
+ reports, or warnings from tic:
+
+ adds200:
+
+ + fix typo
+
+ gnome-256color
+
+ + base entry on "gnome", not "vte", for consistency
+
+ interix
+
+ + trim unnecessary setf/setb
+
+ linux-16color
+
+ + accommodate Linux console driver incompatibility introduced
+ in early 2018
+
+ nsterm-256color:
+
+ + add nsterm-build309 to replace nsterm-256color, assigning the
+ latter as an alias of nsterm, to make mouse work with
+ nsterm-256color
+
+ regent40:
+
+ + renumber function-keys to match manual
+
+ regent60:
+
+ + add cd (clr_eos)
+ + corrected acsc
+ + add shifted function-keys
+
+ tvi950:
+
+ + added function-key definitions to agree with Televideo 950
+ manual
+ + corrected acsc
+ + remove bogus kf0
+ + add bel
+
+ tvi955:
+
+ + fix typo
+
+ vi200:
+
+ + add acsc string, including right/down-arrow
+
+ wy50:
+
+ + corrected acsc
+
+ wy50 and wy60:
+
+ + add shifted function-keys as kF1 to kF16
+
+ xterm+x11hilite:
+
+ + eliminate unused p5 parameter.
+
+ A few entries use extensions (user-defined terminal capabilities):
+ * use xterm+sm+1006 (aka "SGR 1006 mouse") for konsole-base and
+ putty
+ * add Smol/Rmol user-defined capability to tmux and vte-2018
+ * add Smulx user-defined capability to tmux, vte-2018
+
+ Documentation
+
+ As usual, this release
+ * improves documentation by describing new features,
+ * attempts to improve the description of features which users have
+ found confusing
+ * fills in overlooked descriptions of features which were described
+ in the NEWS file but treated sketchily in manual pages.
+
+ In addition to providing background information to explain these
+ features and show how they evolved, there are corrections,
+ clarifications, etc.:
+ * Corrections:
+ + correct error-returns listed in manual pages for a few form
+ functions
+ + corrected prototypes in several manpages using script to
+ extract those in compilable form.
+ + fix typo in term.5, improve explanation of format
+ * Clarify in manual pages that vwprintw and vwscanw are obsolete.
+ They have not been part of X/Open Curses since 2007.
+ * New/improved history and portability sections:
+ + curs_addch.3x gives some background for ACS symbols.
+ + curs_getcchar.3x explains a difference between ncurses and
+ X/Open Curses.
+ + curs_getstr.3x gives historical/portability background for
+ the length parameter of wgetnstr.
+ + curs_slk.3x lists a few differences between SVr4 curses and
+ X/Open Curses for soft-keys.
+ + curs_terminfo.3x explains that the initial implementation of
+ terminfo in SVr2 was mostly replaced by other developers in
+ SVr3.
+ + infocmp.1 explains that the initial version of terminfo had
+ no tool for decompiling descriptions. That came later, with
+ SVr3, with a different developer.
+ + tabs.1 tells more than you wanted to know about the tool.
+ + tic.1 explains that the initial version of terminfo had a
+ rudimentary tool (based on termcap) for compiling entries.
+ The tool used with Unix was developed by others for SVr3.
+ + toe.1 explains the origin of this tool.
+ * Improvements for user_caps.5:
+ + mention meml, memu and box1
+ + expanded description of XM
+ + add a clarification regarding the RGB capability.
+ + mention user_caps.5 in the tic and infocmp manual pages.
+ * Other improvements:
+ + curs_add_wch.3x adds note about Unicode terminology for the
+ line-drawing characters.
+ + curs_color.3x improves discussion of error returns and
+ extensions.
+ + curs_mouse.3x explains how the kmous and XM capabilities are
+ used for xterm-mouse input.
+ + curs_refresh.3x improves documentation regarding the virtual
+ and physical screens.
+ + curs_util.3x mentions a difference between SVr4 and X/Open
+ Curses for unctrl.h
+ + curs_variables.3x improves description of the init_tabs
+ capability and TABSIZE variable.
+ + ncurses.3x improves documentation regarding feature-test
+ macros in curses.h
+ + resizeterm.3x about top-level windows which touch the
+ screen's borders.
+ + tput.1 clarifies how tput determines the terminal size.
+
+ There are no new manual pages (all of the manual page updates are to
+ existing pages).
+
+ Some of the improvements are more subtle, relating to the way the
+ information is presented. For instance, the generated terminfo.5 file
+ uses a different table layout, allowing it to use space on wide
+ terminals more effectively.
+
+ Interesting bug-fixes
+
+ While there were many bugs fixed during development of ncurses 6.2,
+ only a few (the reason for this release) were both important and
+ interesting. Most of the bug-fixes were for local issues which did not
+ affect compatibility across releases. Since those are detailed in the
+ NEWS file no elaboration is needed here.
+
+ The interesting bugs were in tic/infocmp's handling of user-defined
+ capabilities. These were not recent bugs. Initially it was a simple
+ problem:
+ * The user-defined capabilities can be any type (boolean, number or
+ string), but once given a type all uses of the name must conform
+ to that type--unless some special support for a particular
+ multi-typed name is built into ncurses.
+ * One of simpleterm's contributors copied some definitions for using
+ tmux's user-defined capabilities in late in 2016.
+
+diff --git a/st.info b/st.info
+@@ -185,7 +185,10 @@ st| simpleterm,
+ tsl=\E]0;,
+ xenl,
+ vpa=\E[%i%p1%dd,
+-
++# Tmux unofficial extensions, see TERMINFO EXTENSIONS in tmux(1)
++ Se,
++ Ss,
++ Tc,
+
+ st-256color| simpleterm with 256 colors,
+ use=st,
+
+ * Later, in (referring to a version from mid-2017), a user asked to
+ have it updated in ncurses.
+ * However, it had an error from the change in late 2016. The
+ terminal description made what tmux expected to be string actually
+ a boolean.
+ Over the years, there were problems with each of simpleterm's
+ terminal descriptions. I repaired those, and usually dealt with
+ the problem.
+ * The difference in this case was that when compiling the terminal
+ database, tic may have in memory the definitions for more than one
+ terminal description (so that it can resolve "use=" clauses).
+ Seeing two different types for the same name, in certain
+ situations it would incorrectly merge the symbol tables for the
+ two terminal descriptions.
+ * On simpleterm's side, their bug was finally fixed in late 2019,
+ three years after the bug was created.
+
+ For ncurses, the elapsed time to fix this bug was less than three
+ years. Someone reported a problem with the terminal description a few
+ weeks after releasing ncurses 6.1 (in tmux #1264), and the terminal
+ description was updated that week (ncurses patch 20180224):
+
+20180224
+ + modify _nc_resolve_uses2() to detect incompatible types when merging
+ a "use=" clause of extended capabilities. The problem was seen in a
+ defective terminfo integrated from simpleterm sources in 20171111,
+ compounded by repair in 20180121.
+ + correct Ss/Ms interchange in st-0.7 entry (tmux #1264) -TD
+
+ The larger part of that change added a check to prevent a simple merge
+ of terminal descriptions where the same user-defined name was used
+ with different types. But it raised some questions:
+ * Was there a reliable way to manage terminal descriptions which
+ used the same extended name in different ways?
+ * Should ncurses provide a registry of well-known extended names,
+ with their types?
+
+ Since the correction to terminfo.src could have been readily adopted
+ by packagers, there was nothing more to be done from ncurses'
+ standpoint on that part. But improving ncurses to prevent issues like
+ that is the reason for making a release.
+
+ Nothing more (constructive) was mentioned with regard to simpleterm.
+ But a few problems were found in the handling of user-defined
+ capabilities:
+ * Forward-references to user-defined capabilities in a "use=" clause
+ did not allocate new data for each use. In tic, successive
+ compilation of terminal entries could add user-defined
+ capabilities to the wrong terminal entry.
+ This was not noticed before, since xterm's terminal descriptions
+ were the main users of the feature, and almost all of the uses of
+ the building-blocks which contained user-defined capabilities were
+ backward-references.
+ * There is one (documented) case where ncurses 6.1 supports a
+ user-defined capability that could be any type (i.e., "RGB"). The
+ check added in February 2018 to guard against mismatches did not
+ handle all of the combinations needed.
+
+ Both of these issues dated from the original implementation of
+ user-defined capabilities. Fixing them does not change the terminal
+ database, but a older tic without the fixes will not be able to handle
+ terminfo sources which rely upon those fixes. Starting in June 2019,
+ the download link for the terminfo source file was capped at that
+ date. The development sources have an up-to-date copy of the file, for
+ people with a legitimate need for it.
+
+ The "-c" (check) option of tic is not very useful if it cannot offer
+ advice on parameters needed for user-defined capabilities. The various
+ Caps files were reorganized to reduce redundancy, and in the common
+ portion (Caps-ncurses), a registry of user-defined capabilities is
+ provided for use by tic. While users can still define their own custom
+ capabilities, tic will not offer any advice when their parameters do
+ not match.
+
+ In ncurses 6.2, tic makes a special check to allow any type for RGB,
+ but its being able to do this relies upon fixes made in the ncurses
+ library in mid-2019.
+
+ Configuration changes
+
+ Major changes
+
+ There are no major changes. Several new options were added to ease
+ integration of packages with systems using different versions of GNAT
+ and ncurses. Also, improvements were made to configure checks.
+
+ Configuration options
+
+ There are a few new/modified configure options:
+
+ --with-config-suffix
+ helps work around a filename conflict with Debian packages
+ versus test-packages.
+
+ --with-ada-libname
+ allows one to rename the "AdaCurses" library (at least one
+ packager prefers a lowercase name).
+
+ --with-fallbacks
+ now ensures there is a value, and adds the fallback information
+ to top-level Makefile summary.
+
+ --with-pcre2
+ check for pcre-posix library to help with MinGW port.
+
+ --with-tic-path and
+
+ --with-infocmp-path
+ help work around problems building fallback source using
+ pre-6.0 tic/infocmp.
+
+ --with-versioned-syms
+ option value can now be a relative pathname.
+
+ Portability
+
+ Many of the portability changes are implemented via the configure
+ script:
+ * ignore $TERMINFO as a default value in configure script if it came
+ from the infocmp -Q option.
+ * distinguish gcc from icc and clang when the --enable-warnings
+ option is not used, to avoid unnecessary warnings about
+ unrecognized inline options
+ * consistently prepend new libraries as they are found during
+ configuration, rather than relying upon the linker to resolve
+ order dependencies of libraries.
+ * modified configure scripts to reduce relinking/ranlib during
+ library install :
+ + use "install -p" when available, to avoid need for ranlib of
+ static libraries.
+ + scripts which use "--disable-relink;" add a 1-second sleep to
+ work around tools which use whole-second timestamps, e.g., in
+ utime rather than the actual file system resolution.
+ * add configure check for getenv to work around implementation shown
+ in Emscripten which overwrites the previous return value on each
+ call.
+ Use that to optionally suppress START_TRACE macro, whose call to
+ getenv may not work properly
+ * change target configure level for _XOPEN_SOURCE to 600 to address
+ use of vsscanf and setenv.
+ * reduce use of _GNU_SOURCE for current glibc where _DEFAULT_SOURCE
+ combines with _XOPEN_SOURCE
+ Allow for Cygwin's newlib when checking for the _DEFAULT_SOURCE
+ symbol.
+ MidnightBSD is now checked for the _XOPEN_SOURCE-related
+ definitions.
+ * If the check for va_copy or __va_copy fails,
+ + configure now tries copying the pointers for va_list, or as
+ an array.
+ + alternatively, it checks for __builtin_va_copy(), which could
+ be used with AIX xlc in c89 mode.
+ * several changes to support a port to Ultrix 3.1:
+ + check if "b" binary feature of fopen works
+ + check for missing feature of locale.h
+ + add fallback for strstr() in test-programs
+ + add fallback for STDOUT_FILENO in test-programs
+ * The test/configure script (used for ncurses-examples) is improved:
+ + work around non-ncurses termcap.h file, e.g., in Slackware.
+ + check for TABSIZE variable.
+ + checks for the X11/Intrinsic.h header, accommodate recent
+ MacOS changes which largely emptied /usr/include.
+
+ Here are some of the other portability fixes:
+ * added dummy "check" rule in top-level and test-Makefile to
+ simplify building test-packages for ArchLinux.
+ * dropped library-dependency on psapi for MinGW port, since
+ win_driver.c defines PSAPI_VERSION to 2, making it use
+ GetProcessImageFileName from kernel32.dll
+ * made build-fixes for configuration using --program-suffix with
+ Ada95, noticed with MacOS but applicable to other platforms
+ without libpanelw, etc.
+ * modified ncurses/Makefile.in to fix a case where Debian/testing
+ changes to the ld --as-needed configuration broke ncurses-examples
+ test packages.
+ * used _WIN32/_WIN64 in preference to __MINGW32__/__MINGW64__
+ symbols to simplify building with Microsoft Visual C++, since the
+ former are defined in both compiler configurations.
+ _________________________________________________________________
+
+Features of ncurses
+
+ The ncurses package is fully upward-compatible with SVr4 (System V
+ Release 4) curses:
+ * All of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are documented).
+ * ncurses supports all of the for SVr4 curses features including
+ keyboard mapping, color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and
+ automatic recognition of keypad and function keys.
+ * ncurses provides these SVr4 add-on libraries (not part of X/Open
+ Curses):
+ + the panels library, supporting a stack of windows with
+ backing store.
+ + the menus library, supporting a uniform but flexible
+ interface for menu programming.
+ + the form library, supporting data collection through
+ on-screen forms.
+ * ncurses's terminal database is fully compatible with that used by
+ SVr4 curses.
+ + ncurses supports user-defined capabilities which it can see,
+ but which are hidden from SVr4 curses applications using the
+ same terminal database.
+ + It can be optionally configured to match the format used in
+ related systems such as AIX and Tru64.
+ + Alternatively, ncurses can be configured to use hashed
+ databases rather than the directory of files used by SVr4
+ curses.
+ * The ncurses utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo
+ entries for use with less capable curses/terminfo versions such as
+ the HP/UX and AIX ports.