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- * Copyright (c) 1998-2017,2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
+ * Copyright 2019,2020 Thomas E. Dickey *
+ * Copyright 2000-2013,2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
* *
* Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a *
* copy of this software and associated documentation files (the *
<p>Historically, the first ancestor of <code>curses</code> was
the routines written to provide screen-handling for the
- <code>vi</code> editor; these used the already-existing
- <code>termcap</code> database facility for describing terminal
+ <code>vi</code> editor; these used the <code>termcap</code>
+ database facility (both released in 3BSD) for describing terminal
capabilities. These routines were abstracted into a documented
library and first released with the early BSD UNIX versions. All
- of this work was done by students at the University of
- California.</p>
+ of this work was done by students at the University of California
+ (Berkeley campus). The curses library was first published in
+ 4.0BSD, a year after 3BSD (i.e., late 1980).</p>
<p>After graduation, one of those students went to work at
AT&T Bell Labs, and made an improved <code>termcap</code>
library called <code>terminfo</code> (i.e.,
- “libterm”). That was subsequently released in System
- V Release 2. Thereafter, other developers added to the terminfo
- library. For instance, a student at Cornell University wrote an
- improved terminfo library as well as a tool (<code>tic</code>) to
- compile the terminal descriptions. As a general rule, AT&T
- did not identify the developers in the source-code or
- documentation; the <code>tic</code> and <code>infocmp</code>
- programs are the exceptions.</p>
+ “libterm”), and adapted the curses library to use
+ this. That was subsequently released in System V Release 2 (early
+ 1984). Thereafter, other developers added to the curses and
+ terminfo libraries. For instance, a student at Cornell University
+ wrote an improved terminfo library as well as a tool
+ (<code>tic</code>) to compile the terminal descriptions. As a
+ general rule, AT&T did not identify the developers in the
+ source-code or documentation; the <code>tic</code> and
+ <code>infocmp</code> programs are the exceptions.</p>
<p>System V Release 3 (System III UNIX) from Bell Labs featured a
- rewritten and much-improved <code>curses</code> library,l along
- with the <code>tic</code> program.</p>
+ rewritten and much-improved <code>curses</code> library, along
+ with the <code>tic</code> program (late 1986).</p>
<p>To recap, terminfo is based on Berkeley's termcap database,
but contains a number of improvements and extensions.