- These functions are described in the XSI Curses standard, Issue 4.
-
- The ncurses library obeys the XPG4 standard and the historical practice
- of the AT&T curses implementations, in that the echo bit is cleared
- when curses initializes the terminal state. BSD curses differed from
- this slightly; it left the echo bit on at initialization, but the BSD
- <STRONG>raw</STRONG> call turned it off as a side-effect. For best portability, set
- <STRONG>echo</STRONG> or <STRONG>noecho</STRONG> explicitly just after initialization, even if your pro-
- gram remains in cooked mode.
-
- The XSI Curses standard is ambiguous on the question of whether <STRONG>raw</STRONG>
- should disable the CRLF translations controlled by <STRONG>nl</STRONG> and <STRONG>nonl</STRONG>. BSD
- curses did turn off these translations; AT&T curses (at least as late
- as SVr1) did not. We chose to do so, on the theory that a programmer
- requesting raw input wants a clean (ideally 8-bit clean) connection
- that the operating system will not alter.
-
- When <STRONG>keypad</STRONG> is first enabled, ncurses loads the key-definitions for the
- current terminal description. If the terminal description includes ex-
- tended string capabilities, e.g., from using the <STRONG>-x</STRONG> option of <STRONG>tic</STRONG>, then
- ncurses also defines keys for the capabilities whose names begin with
- "k". The corresponding keycodes are generated and (depending on previ-
- ous loads of terminal descriptions) may differ from one execution of a
- program to the next. The generated keycodes are recognized by the <STRONG>key-</STRONG>
- <STRONG>name</STRONG> function (which will then return a name beginning with "k" denot-
- ing the terminfo capability name rather than "K", used for curses key-
- names). On the other hand, an application can use <STRONG>define_key</STRONG> to estab-
- lish a specific keycode for a given string. This makes it possible for
- an application to check for an extended capability's presence with
- <STRONG>tigetstr</STRONG>, and reassign the keycode to match its own needs.
+ Applications employing <EM>ncurses</EM> extensions should condition their use on
+ the visibility of the <STRONG>NCURSES_VERSION</STRONG> preprocessor macro.
+
+ Except as noted in section "EXTENSIONS" above, X/Open Curses, Issue 4,
+ Version 2 describes these functions.
+
+ <EM>ncurses</EM> follows X/Open Curses and the historical practice of AT&T
+ <EM>curses</EM> implementations, in that the echo bit is cleared when <EM>curses</EM>
+ initializes the terminal state. BSD <EM>curses</EM> differed from this
+ slightly; it left the echo bit on at initialization, but the BSD <STRONG>raw</STRONG>
+ call turned it off as a side effect. For best portability, set <STRONG>echo</STRONG> or
+ <STRONG>noecho</STRONG> explicitly just after initialization, even if your program
+ remains in cooked mode.
+
+ X/Open Curses is ambiguous regarding whether <STRONG>raw</STRONG> should disable the
+ CR/LF translations controlled by <STRONG>nl</STRONG> and <STRONG>nonl</STRONG>. BSD <EM>curses</EM> did turn off
+ these translations; AT&T <EM>curses</EM> (at least as late as SVr1) did not.
+ <EM>ncurses</EM> does so, on the assumption that a programmer requesting raw
+ input wants a clean (ideally, 8-bit clean) connection that the
+ operating system will not alter.
+
+ When <STRONG>keypad</STRONG> is first enabled, <EM>ncurses</EM> loads the key definitions for the
+ current terminal description. If the terminal description includes
+ extended string capabilities, e.g., from using the <STRONG>-x</STRONG> option of <STRONG>tic</STRONG>,
+ then <EM>ncurses</EM> also defines keys for the capabilities whose names begin
+ with "k". The corresponding keycodes are generated and (depending on
+ previous loads of terminal descriptions) may differ from one execution
+ of a program to the next. The generated keycodes are recognized by the
+ <STRONG><A HREF="curs_util.3x.html">keyname(3x)</A></STRONG> function (which will then return a name beginning with "k"
+ denoting the terminfo capability name rather than "K", used for <EM>curses</EM>
+ key names). On the other hand, an application can use <STRONG><A HREF="define_key.3x.html">define_key(3x)</A></STRONG>
+ to establish a specific keycode for a given string. This makes it
+ possible for an application to check for an extended capability's
+ presence with <STRONG>tigetstr</STRONG>, and reassign the keycode to match its own
+ needs.
projects / ncurses.git / blobdiff