+</PRE>
+<H2><a name="h2-PORTABILITY">PORTABILITY</a></H2><PRE>
+ X/Open notes that <STRONG>vidattr</STRONG> and <STRONG>vidputs</STRONG> may be macros.
+
+ The function <STRONG>setterm</STRONG> is not described by X/Open and must
+ be considered non-portable. All other functions are as
+ described by X/Open.
+
+ <STRONG>setupterm</STRONG> copies the terminal name to the array <STRONG>ttytype</STRONG>.
+ This is not part of X/Open Curses, but is assumed by some
+ applications.
+
+ If configured to use the terminal-driver, e.g., for the
+ MinGW port,
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> <STRONG>setupterm</STRONG> interprets a missing/empty TERM variable as
+ the special value "unknown".
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> <STRONG>setupterm</STRONG> allows explicit use of the the windows con-
+ sole driver by checking if $TERM is set to "#win32con"
+ or an abbreviation of that string.
+
+ Older versions of <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> assumed that the file descriptor
+ passed to <STRONG>setupterm</STRONG> from <STRONG>initscr</STRONG> or <STRONG>newterm</STRONG> uses buffered
+ I/O, and would write to the corresponding stream. In ad-
+ dition to the limitation that the terminal was left in
+ block-buffered mode on exit (like SystemV curses), it was
+ problematic because <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> did not allow a reliable way
+ to cleanup on receiving SIGTSTP. The current version uses
+ output buffers managed directly by <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG>. Some of the
+ low-level functions described in this manual page write to
+ the standard output. They are not signal-safe. The high-
+ level functions in <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> use alternate versions of these
+ functions using the more reliable buffering scheme.
+
+ In System V Release 4, <STRONG>set_curterm</STRONG> has an <STRONG>int</STRONG> return type
+ and returns <STRONG>OK</STRONG> or <STRONG>ERR</STRONG>. We have chosen to implement the
+ X/Open Curses semantics.
+
+ In System V Release 4, the third argument of <STRONG>tputs</STRONG> has the
+ type <STRONG>int</STRONG> <STRONG>(*putc)(char)</STRONG>.
+
+ At least one implementation of X/Open Curses (Solaris) re-
+ turns a value other than OK/ERR from <STRONG>tputs</STRONG>. That returns
+ the length of the string, and does no error-checking.
+
+ X/Open Curses prototypes <STRONG>tparm</STRONG> with a fixed number of pa-
+ rameters, rather than a variable argument list. This im-
+ plementation uses a variable argument list, but can be
+ configured to use the fixed-parameter list. Portable ap-
+ plications should provide 9 parameters after the format;
+ zeroes are fine for this purpose.
+
+ In response to comments by Thomas E. Dickey, X/Open Curses
+ Issue 7 proposed the <STRONG>tiparm</STRONG> function in mid-2009.
+
+ X/Open notes that after calling <STRONG>mvcur</STRONG>, the curses state
+ may not match the actual terminal state, and that an ap-
+ plication should touch and refresh the window before re-
+ suming normal curses calls. Both <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> and System V Re-
+ lease 4 curses implement <STRONG>mvcur</STRONG> using the SCREEN data allo-
+ cated in either <STRONG>initscr</STRONG> or <STRONG>newterm</STRONG>. So though it is docu-
+ mented as a terminfo function, <STRONG>mvcur</STRONG> is really a curses
+ function which is not well specified.
+
+ X/Open states that the old location must be given for
+ <STRONG>mvcur</STRONG>. This implementation allows the caller to use -1's
+ for the old ordinates. In that case, the old location is
+ unknown.
+
+ Other implementions may not declare the capability name
+ arrays. Some provide them without declaring them. X/Open
+ does not specify them.
+
+ Extended terminal capability names, e.g., as defined by
+ <STRONG>tic</STRONG> <STRONG>-x</STRONG>, are not stored in the arrays described here.