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<TITLE>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</TITLE>
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<H1>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</H1>
-The ncurses (new curses) library is a freeware emulation of System V
-Release 4.0 curses. It uses terminfo format, supports pads and color
+The ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation of
+curses in System V Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo format,
+supports pads and color
and multiple highlights and forms characters and function-key mapping,
and has all the other SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD curses.<P>
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
+considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the keepers of
+Unix releases such as BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to switch over to
ncurses.<P>
-The ncurses code was developed under Linux. It should port easily to
-any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!<P>
+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 and NetBSD as an external package.
+It should port easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX.
+It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!<P>
The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including a
terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), clear(1), tput(1), tset(1),
The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at
the GNU distribution site
-<A HREF="ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu">ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu</A>.
-It is also available at
-<A HREF="ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses">ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses</A>.
+<A HREF="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/</A> .
+<br>It is also available at
+<A HREF="ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</A> .
-<H1>Features of ncurses</H1>
+<H1>Release Notes</H1>
-The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4) curses:<P>
+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.
+<p>
+Interface changes:
+<ul>
+ <li>terminfo installs "xterm-new" as "xterm" entry rather than
+ "xterm-old" (aka xterm-r6).
+
+ <li>terminfo data is installed using the tic -x option (few systems
+ still use ncurses 4.2).
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>modify parameter type in c++ binding for insch() and mvwinsch() to
+ be consistent with underlying ncurses library (was char, is chtype).
+
+ <li>change NCursesWindow::err_handler() to a virtual function.
+
+ <li>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.
+
+
+ <li>add symbol to curses.h which can be used to suppress include of
+ stdbool.h, e.g.,
+ <pre>
+ #define NCURSES_ENABLE_STDBOOL_H 0
+ #include <curses.h>
+ </pre>
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>winnstr() now returns multibyte character strings for the
+ wide-character configuration.
+
+ <li>assume_default_colors() no longer requires that
+ use_default_colors() be called first.
+
+ <li>data_ahead() now works with wide-characters.
+
+ <li>slk_set() and slk_wset() now accept and store multibyte or
+ multicolumn characters.
+
+ <li>start_color() now returns OK if colors have
+ already been started.
+ start_color() also returns ERR if it cannot allocate memory.
+
+ <li>pair_content() now returns -1 for consistency with init_pair()
+ if it corresponds to the default-color.
+
+ <li>unctrl() now returns null if its parameter does not correspond
+ to an unsigned char.
+
+</ul>
+New features and improvements:
+<ul>
+ <li>library
+ <ul>
+ <li>environment variable NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS supports
+ miscellaneous terminal emulators which ignore alternate
+ character set escape sequences when in UTF-8 mode.
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>change GPM initialization, using dl library to load it
+ dynamically at runtime.
+
+ <li>form, menu and panel libraries support debug-tracing.
+
+ </ul>
+
+ <li>add NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html by Pradeep Padala
+ (see http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/).
+
+ <li>programs:
+
+ <li>infocmp:
+ <ul>
+ <li>The -i option now matches 8-bit controls against its table
+ entries, e.g., so it can analyze the xterm-8bit entry.
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ </ul>
+
+ <li>tic:
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>modify termcap-parsing to retain 2-character aliases at the
+ beginning of an entry if the "-x" option is used in tic.
+
+ <li>filter out long extended names when translating to termcap
+ format. Only two characters are permissible for termcap
+ capability names.
+
+ <li>correct translation of "%%" in terminfo format to termcap,
+ e.g., using "tic -C".
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>add a check for improperly ended strings, i.e., where a
+ following line begins in column 1.
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>add check (with debug configuration) that provides about the
+ runtime changes that would be made to sgr0 for termcap
+ applications.
+
+ </ul>
+
+ <li>tset:
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ </ul>
+
+</ul>
+Major bug fixes:
+<ul>
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>cells in the WINDOW which are continuations of a multicolumn
+ character are encoded differently, making repainting more
+ reliable.
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>make setcchar() now works when its wchar_t* parameter is
+ pointing to a string which contains more data than can be converted.
+
+ <li>win_wchnstr() now works for more than one cell.
+
+ <li>resizeterm() now processes all levels of window hierarchy.
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>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.
+
+</ul>
+
+Portability:
+<ul>
+ <li>configure script:
+ <ul>
+ <li>new options:
+ <dl>
+ <dt>--enable-largefile
+ <dd>set compiler and linker flags to use largefile support.
+
+ <dt>--enable-ext-colors
+ <dd>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.
+
+ <dt>--enable-ext-mouse
+ <dd>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.
+
+ <dt>--with-chtype
+ <dd>overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of chtype
+
+ <dt>--with-mmask-t
+ <dd>overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of mmask_t
+
+ <dt>--without-xterm-new
+ <dd>Installs "xterm-old" as the "xterm" entry of the terminfo
+ database.
+
+ </dl>
+
+ <li>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
+
+ <li>fixes/improvements for cross-compiling:
+
+ <ul>
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>correct BUILD_CPPFLAGS substitution in ncurses/Makefile.in, to allow
+ cross-compiling from a separate directory tree.
+
+ </ul>
+
+ </ul>
+
+ <li>library:
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>modify C++ binding to use some C internal functions to make it
+ compile properly on Solaris (and other platforms).
+
+ <li>remove check in newwin() that prevents allocating windows that
+ extend beyond the screen (Solaris does this).
+
+ <li>check for <code>nl_langinfo(CODESET)</code>, 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 <code>setlocale()</code>
+ should be corrected, to make them work properly with
+ UTF-8 encoding.
+ <br>
+ <strong>In particular, applications which assume (and
+ do not call <code>setlocale()</code>) 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 <code>nl_langinfo(CODESET)</code> is available.</strong>
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ </ul>
+</ul>
+
+<H1>Features of Ncurses</H1>
+
+The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4) curses:
<UL>
<LI>All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are documented).
<LI>Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard mapping, color,
forms-drawing with ACS characters, and automatic recognition of keypad
and function keys.
-<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting
+<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting
a stack of windows with backing store, is included.
-<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting
+<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting
a uniform but flexible interface for menu programming, is included.
-<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting
+<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting
data collection through on-screen forms, is included.
<LI>Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1) implementation
are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format SVr4 curses uses.
entries for use with less capable <STRONG>curses</STRONG>/<STRONG>terminfo</STRONG>
versions such as the HP/UX and AIX ports.</UL>
-The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over SVr4:<P>
+The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over SVr4:
<UL>
<LI>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,
+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
calls is documented so you can use the SVr4 subset only).
-<LI>Unlike SVr4 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost corner
+<LI>Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost corner
of the screen if your terminal has an insert-character capability.
-<LI>(PC-clone boxes only) Support for access to the IBM PC ROM characters
-0-32 through the highlight A_ALTCHARSET.
<LI>Ada95 and C++ bindings.
-<LI>Support for mouse event reporting under xterm.
+<LI>Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and OS/2 console windows.
<LI>Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm package.
<LI>The function <CODE>wresize()</CODE> allows you to resize windows, preserving
their data.
automatically shift highlight boundaries when doing so would make it
possible to draw the highlight without changing the visual appearance
of the screen.
-<LI>It is possible to generate the library with a list of pre-loaded
+<LI>It is possible to generate the library with a list of pre-loaded
fallback entries linked to it so that it can serve those terminal types even
when no terminfo tree or termcap file is accessible (this may be useful
for support of screen-oriented programs that must run in single-user mode).
if it exists and the user has no write access to the system directory.
This feature makes it easier for users to have personal terminfo entries
without giving up access to the system terminfo directory.
-<LI>You may specify a path of directories to search for compiled
+<LI>You may specify a path of directories to search for compiled
descriptions with the environment variable TERMINFO_DIRS (this
generalizes the feature provided by TERMINFO under stock System V.)
<LI>In terminfo source files, use capabilities may refer not just to
<H1>State of the Package</H1>
Numerous bugs present in earlier versions have been fixed; the
-library is far more reliable than it used to be. Bounds checking in many
-`dangerous' entry points has been improved. The code is now type-safe
+library is far more reliable than it used to be. Bounds checking in many
+`dangerous' entry points has been improved. The code is now type-safe
according to gcc -Wall. The library has been checked for malloc leaks and
arena corruption by the Purify memory-allocation tester.<P>
The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of applications
-including:<P>
+including (versions starting with those noted):
<DL>
+<DT> cdk
+<DD> Curses Development Kit
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/cdk/">http://invisible-island.net/cdk/</A>
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/">http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/</a>
<DT> ded
<DD> directory-editor
-<A HREF="ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ded">ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ded</A>.
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/ded/">http://invisible-island.net/ded/</A>
<DT> dialog
<DD> the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and the basis
-for similar applications on Linux.
-<DT> lynx-2.7
+for similar applications on GNU/Linux.
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/dialog/">http://invisible-island.net/dialog/</A>
+<DT> lynx
<DD> the character-screen WWW browser
-<DT> Midnight Commander 4.1
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://lynx.isc.org/release/">http://lynx.isc.org/release/</A>
+<DT> Midnight Commander
<DD> file manager
-<DT> mutt 0.88
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://www.ibiblio.org/mc/">http://www.ibiblio.org/mc/</A>
+<DT> mutt
<DD> mail utility
-<DT> ncftp 2.0
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://www.mutt.org/">http://www.mutt.org/</A>
+<DT> ncftp
<DD> file-transfer utility
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://www.ncftp.com/">http://www.ncftp.com/</A>
<DT> nvi
<DD> New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7 and later.
-<DT> taper
-<DD> tape archive utility
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://www.bostic.com/vi/">http://www.bostic.com/vi/</A>
+<br>
+<DT> pinfo
+<DD> Lynx-like info browser.
+<A HREF="http://dione.ids.pl/~pborys/software/pinfo/">http://dione.ids.pl/~pborys/software/pinfo/</A>
+<DT> tin
+<DD> newsreader, supporting color, MIME
+<A HREF="http://www.tin.org/">http://www.tin.org/</A>
<DT> vh-1.6
<DD> Volks-Hypertext browser for the Jargon File
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html">http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html</A>
</DL>
as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support alone:
<DL>
-<DT> minicom-1.75
+<DT> minicom
<DD> terminal emulator
-<DT> tin-unoff
-<DD> tin 1.4 newsreader, supporting color, MIME
-<A HREF="ftp://ftp.akk.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/news/clients/tin-unoff">ftp://ftp.akk.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/news/clients/tin-unoff</A>.
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://www.netsonic.fi/~walker/minicom.html">http://www.netsonic.fi/~walker/minicom.html</A>
<DT> vile
<DD> vi-like-emacs
-<A HREF="ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/vile">ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/vile</A>.
+<br>
+<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/vile/">http://invisible-island.net/vile/</A>
</DL>
<P>
<H2>Who's Who and What's What</H2>
-The original developers of ncurses are <A
-HREF="mailto:zmbenhal@netcom.com">Zeyd Ben-Halim</A> and
-<A HREF="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html">Eric S. Raymond</A>.
+Zeyd Ben-Halim
+started it from a previous package pcurses, written by Pavel Curtis.
+Eric S. Raymond
+continued development.
+Jürgen Pfeifer wrote most of the form and menu libraries.
Ongoing work is being done by
-<A HREF="mailto:dickey@clark.net">Thomas Dickey</A>
-and
-<A HREF="mailto:Juergen.Pfeifer@T-Online.de">Jürgen Pfeifer</A>.
-<A HREF="mailto:florian@gnu.org">Florian La Roche</A>
-acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation, which holds the
-copyright on ncurses.
+<A HREF="mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net">Thomas Dickey</A>.
+Thomas Dickey
+acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation,
+which holds the copyright on ncurses.
Contact the current maintainers at
<A HREF="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">bug-ncurses@gnu.org</A>.
<P>
testing of this package.<P>
Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release are made available at
-<A HREF="ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses">ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/ncurses</A>.
+<A HREF="ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</A> .
<H2>Future Plans</H2>
<UL>
<LI>Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization support.
<LI>Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.
</UL>
-We need people to help with these projects. If you are interested in working
+We need people to help with these projects. If you are interested in working
on them, please join the ncurses list.
<H2>Other Related Resources</H2>
-The distribution includes and uses a version of the terminfo-format
-terminal description file maintained by Eric Raymond.
-<A HREF="http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo">http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo</A>.<P>
+The distribution provides a newer version of the terminfo-format
+terminal description file maintained by
+<A HREF="http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/">Eric Raymond</A> .
+Unlike the older version, the termcap and terminfo data are provided
+in the same file.<P>
You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics
not covered in the terminfo file at
<A HREF="http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal_index.html">Richard Shuford's
-archive</A>.
+archive</A> .
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