- The XSI Curses standard, Issue 4 describes these func-
- tions. However, they are marked TO BE WITHDRAWN and may
- be removed in future versions.
-
- Neither the XSI Curses standard nor the SVr4 man pages
- documented the return values of <STRONG>tgetent</STRONG> correctly, though
- all three were in fact returned ever since SVr1. In par-
- ticular, an omission in the XSI Curses documentation has
- been misinterpreted to mean that <STRONG>tgetent</STRONG> returns <STRONG>OK</STRONG> or
- <STRONG>ERR</STRONG>. Because the purpose of these functions is to provide
- compatibility with the <EM>termcap</EM> library, that is a defect
- in XCurses, Issue 4, Version 2 rather than in ncurses.
-
- External variables are provided for support of certain
- termcap applications. However, termcap applications' use
- of those variables is poorly documented, e.g., not distin-
- guishing between input and output. In particular, some
- applications are reported to declare and/or modify <STRONG>ospeed</STRONG>.
-
- The comment that only the first two characters of the <STRONG>id</STRONG>
- parameter are used escapes many application developers.
- The original BSD 4.2 termcap library (and historical
- relics thereof) did not require a trailing null NUL on the
- parameter name passed to <STRONG>tgetstr</STRONG>, <STRONG>tgetnum</STRONG> and <STRONG>tgetflag</STRONG>.
- Some applications assume that the termcap interface does
- not require the trailing NUL for the parameter name. Tak-
- ing into account these issues:
-
- <STRONG>o</STRONG> As a special case, <STRONG>tgetflag</STRONG> matched against a single-
- character identifier provided that was at the end of
- the terminal description. You should not rely upon
- this behavior in portable programs. This implementa-
- tion disallows matches against single-character capa-
- bility names.
-
- <STRONG>o</STRONG> This implementation disallows matches by the termcap
- interface against extended capability names which are
- longer than two characters.
+ These functions are provided for supporting legacy applications, and
+ should not be used in new programs:
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> The XSI Curses standard, Issue 4 describes these functions. Howev-
+ er, they are marked TO BE WITHDRAWN and may be removed in future
+ versions.
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> X/Open Curses, Issue 5 (December 2007) marked the termcap interface
+ (along with <STRONG>vwprintw</STRONG> and <STRONG>vwscanw</STRONG>) as withdrawn.
+
+ Neither the XSI Curses standard nor the SVr4 man pages documented the
+ return values of <STRONG>tgetent</STRONG> correctly, though all three were in fact re-
+ turned ever since SVr1. In particular, an omission in the XSI Curses
+ documentation has been misinterpreted to mean that <STRONG>tgetent</STRONG> returns <STRONG>OK</STRONG>
+ or <STRONG>ERR</STRONG>. Because the purpose of these functions is to provide compati-
+ bility with the <EM>termcap</EM> library, that is a defect in XCurses, Issue 4,
+ Version 2 rather than in ncurses.
+
+ External variables are provided for support of certain termcap applica-
+ tions. However, termcap applications' use of those variables is poorly
+ documented, e.g., not distinguishing between input and output. In par-
+ ticular, some applications are reported to declare and/or modify <STRONG>os-</STRONG>
+ <STRONG>peed</STRONG>.
+
+ The comment that only the first two characters of the <STRONG>id</STRONG> parameter are
+ used escapes many application developers. The original BSD 4.2 termcap
+ library (and historical relics thereof) did not require a trailing null
+ NUL on the parameter name passed to <STRONG>tgetstr</STRONG>, <STRONG>tgetnum</STRONG> and <STRONG>tgetflag</STRONG>.
+ Some applications assume that the termcap interface does not require
+ the trailing NUL for the parameter name. Taking into account these is-
+ sues:
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> As a special case, <STRONG>tgetflag</STRONG> matched against a single-character
+ identifier provided that was at the end of the terminal descrip-
+ tion. You should not rely upon this behavior in portable programs.
+ This implementation disallows matches against single-character ca-
+ pability names.
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> This implementation disallows matches by the termcap interface
+ against extended capability names which are longer than two charac-
+ ters.