X-Git-Url: https://ncurses.scripts.mit.edu/?p=ncurses.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=announce.html.in;h=82079c368c753af8b21f761ab0ca21e303288c5e;hp=11fb87c354712aa346270e7d53c0573d5bd9c7da;hb=refs%2Ftags%2Fv5.5;hpb=a8987e73ec254703634802b4f7ee30d3a485524d
diff --git a/announce.html.in b/announce.html.in
index 11fb87c3..82079c36 100644
--- a/announce.html.in
+++ b/announce.html.in
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
@@ -19,8 +19,8 @@ and multiple highlights and forms characters and function-key mapping,
and has all the other SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD curses.
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.
The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux.
@@ -42,198 +42,186 @@ the GNU distribution site
Release Notes
-This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 and 5.3;
+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 5.3 release.
+These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.4 release.
Interface changes:
New features and improvements:
- library
- - implement logic in lib_mouse.c to handle position reports which
- are generated when XFree86 xterm is initialized with private
- modes 1002 or 1003. These are returned to the application as the
- REPORT_MOUSE_POSITION mask, which was not implemented.
-
- modify soft-key initialization to use A_REVERSE if A_STANDOUT
- would not be shown when colors are used, i.e., if ncv#1 is set in
- the terminfo as is done in "screen".
-
- add configure option for FreeBSD sysmouse, --with-sysmouse, and
- implement library support for that.
+
- environment variable NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS supports
+ miscellaneous terminal emulators which ignore alternate
+ character set escape sequences when in UTF-8 mode.
+
+
- 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.
+
+
- change GPM initialization, using dl library to load it
+ dynamically at runtime.
+
+
- form, menu and panel libraries support debug-tracing.
+
- - programs:
+
- add NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html by Pradeep Padala
+ (see http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/).
-
- - tack:
+
- programs:
+
- infocmp:
- - allow it to run from fallback terminfo data.
-
- reset colors after each color test, correct a place
- where
exit_standout_mode was used instead of
- exit_attribute_mode.
- - improve
bce test by making it set colors other
- than black on white.
+ - The -i option now matches 8-bit controls against its table
+ entries, e.g., so it can analyze the xterm-8bit entry.
+
+
- 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.
+
- tic:
- - handle a case where an entry has no
- description, and capabilities begin on the same line as the entry
- name.
-
- allow a terminfo entry with a leading 2-character name.
-
- improved warnings when suppressing items to fit in termcap's
- 1023-byte limit.
-
- add check for multiple "tc=" clauses in a termcap.
-
- correct logic for resolving "use=" clauses
- allow infocmp and tic to show cancelled capabilities.
-
- check for incomplete line-drawing character mapping.
-
- check for missing/empty/illegal terminfo name.
-
- - tput:
-
- - modify tput to use the same parameter analysis as tparm() does,
- to provide for user-defined strings, e.g., for xterm title, a
- corresponding capability might be
- title=\E]2;%p1%s^G,
+
- modify termcap-parsing to retain 2-character aliases at the
+ beginning of an entry if the "-x" option is used in tic.
+
+
- filter out long extended names when translating to termcap
+ format. Only two characters are permissible for termcap
+ capability names.
+
+
- correct translation of "%%" in terminfo format to termcap,
+ e.g., using "tic -C".
+
+
- 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.
+
+
- add a check for improperly ended strings, i.e., where a
+ following line begins in column 1.
+
+
- 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.
+
+
- add check (with debug configuration) that provides about the
+ runtime changes that would be made to sgr0 for termcap
+ applications.
+
- tset:
- - use the system's default values for CKILL and other default
- control characters.
-
- correct interchanged defaults for kill and interrupt
- characters, which caused it to report unnecessarily.
+
+
- 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.
+
-
Major bug fixes:
- - prevent recursion in wgetch() via wgetnstr() if the connection
- cannot be switched between cooked/raw modes because it is not a TTY.
-
- correct a case in _nc_remove_string(), used by
-
define_key(), to avoid infinite loop if the given string
- happens to be a substring of other strings which are assigned to keys.
+ - 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.
-
- modify logic of acsc to use the original character if no mapping is
- defined, rather than a null.
+
- cells in the WINDOW which are continuations of a multicolumn
+ character are encoded differently, making repainting more
+ reliable.
-
- several improvements for handling multi-cell display of wide
- characters.
-
- - modify setcchar() to allow converting control characters to complex
- characters.
-
- correct handling of multibyte characters in waddch_literal() which
- force wrapping because they are started too late on the line.
-
- modify setcchar() to allow for wchar_t input strings that have
- more than one spacing character.
-
+ - 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.
-
- other fixes for wide-character support:
-
- - rewrote lib_acs.c to allow PutAttrChar() to decide how to render
- alternate-characters, i.e., to work with Linux console and UTF-8
- locale.
-
- implement a workaround so that line-drawing works with screen's
- crippled UTF-8 support (tested with 3.9.13). This only works with
- the wide-character support (--enable-widec); the normal library
- will simply suppress line-drawing when running in a UTF-8 locale in
- screen.
-
- corrections to lib_get_wstr.c:
-
- - null-terminate buffer passed to setcchar(), which occasionally
- failed.
-
- map special characters such as erase- and kill-characters into
- key-codes so those will work as expected even if they are not
- mentioned in the terminfo.
-
-
+ - make setcchar() now works when its wchar_t* parameter is
+ pointing to a string which contains more data than can be converted.
-
- modify
setupterm() to check if the terminfo and
- terminal-modes have already been read. This ensures that it does not
- reinvoke def_prog_mode() when an application calls more
- than one function, such as tgetent() and
- initscr().
+ - win_wchnstr() now works for more than one cell.
-
- fix form_driver() cases for REQ_CLR_EOF, REQ_CLR_EOL, REQ_DEL_CHAR,
- REQ_DEL_PREV and REQ_NEW_LINE, which did not ensure the cursor was at
- the editing position before making modifications.
+
- resizeterm() now processes all levels of window hierarchy.
-
- correct
keybound(), which reported definitions in the
- wrong table, i.e., the list of definitions which are disabled by
- keyok().
+ - 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.
-
- fixes related to safe_sprintf.c:
-
- - correct an allocation size in safe_sprintf.c for the "*" format
- code.
-
- correct safe_sprintf.c to not return a null pointer if the format
- happens to be an empty string.
-
- make return value from _nc_printf_string() consistent. Before,
- depending on whether --enable-safe-sprintf was used, it might not
- be cached for reallocating.
-
+ - 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.
-
- other low-level improvements to the optimization code include:
-
- - if the output is a socket or other non-tty device, use 1
- millisecond
- for the cost in mvcur; previously it was 9 milliseconds because the
- baudrate was not known.
-
- modify lib_getch.c to avoid recursion via wgetnstr() when the
- input
- is not a tty and consequently mode-changes do not work.
-
- fix several places in tack/pad.c which tested and used the
- parameter- and parameterless strings inconsistently.
-
- change several tputs() calls in scrolling code to use putp(), to
- enable padding which may be needed for some terminals.
-
- improve mvcur() by checking if it is safe to move when video
- attributes are set (msgr), and if not, reset/restore attributes
- within that function rather than doing it separately in the GoTo()
- function in tty_update.c.
-
- use tputs() rather than putp() in a few cases in tty_update.c
- since the corresponding delays are proportional to the number of
- lines affected: repeat_char, clr_eos, change_scroll_region.
-
-
- - correct line/column reference in adjust_window(), needed to make
- special windows such as curscr track properly when resizing.
-
-
- fix a potential recursion between napms() and _nc_timed_wait()
-
-
- rewrote lib_insch.c, combining it with lib_insstr.c so both handle
- tab and other control characters consistently.
-
-
- do not try to open gpm mouse driver if standard output is not a
- tty; the gpm library does not make this check.
Portability:
@@ -242,97 +230,85 @@ Portability:
- new options:
- - --with-abi-version option.
-
- addresses platforms where packagers have diverged from
- ncurses ABI numbering.
-
- --with-manpage-format=catonly
-
- addresses
- behavior of BSDI, allow install of man+cat files on NetBSD,
- whose behavior has diverged by requiring both to be present.
-
- --with-manpage-aliases
-
- extends
- "--with-manpage-aliases" to provide the option of generating
- ".so" files rather than symbolic links for manpage aliases.
-
- --with-rel-version
-
- workaround to force
- libtool on Darwin generate the "same" library names as with
- the "--with-shared" option. The Darwin ld program does not
- work well with a zero as the minor-version value.
-
- --with-trace
-
- simplifies defining TRACE to incorporate trace() in libraries.
+
- --enable-largefile
+
- set compiler and linker flags to use largefile support.
+
+
- --enable-ext-colors
+
- 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.
+
+
- --enable-ext-mouse
+
- 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.
+
+
- --with-chtype
+
- overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of chtype
+
+
- --with-mmask-t
+
- overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of mmask_t
+
+
- --without-xterm-new
+
- Installs "xterm-old" as the "xterm" entry of the terminfo
+ database.
+
-
+
+ - 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
+
- fixes/improvements for cross-compiling:
-
-
- - allow BUILD_CC and related configure script variables to be
- overridden from the environment.
-
- use AC_CHECK_TOOL to get proper values for AR and LD for cross
- compiling.
-
- use
$cross_compiling variable in configure script
- rather than comparing $host_alias and
- $target alias, since "host" is traditionally misused
- in autoconf to refer to the target platform.
- - modify run_tic.in to avoid using wrong shared libraries when
- cross-compiling.
-
-
- - fixes for Mac OS X:
-
- - fix a redefinition of
$RANLIB in the configure
- script when libtool is used.
- - modify MKlib_gen.sh to avoid passing "#" tokens through the C
- preprocessor. This works around Mac OS X's preprocessor, which
- insists on adding a blank on each side of the token.
-
-
- - workarounds for broken tools:
+
- - add configure check for wchar_t and wint_t types, rather than
- rely on preprocessor definitions. Also work around for gcc
-
fixinclude bug which creates a shadow copy of
- curses.h if it sees these symbols apparently typedef'd.
- - modify configure script to omit -Winline for gcc 3.3, since
- that feature is broken.
-
- several script fixes to work around the ironically named
- POSIXLY_CORRECT feature of GNU sed 4.0.
-
- modify configure script to avoid using "head -1", which does
- not work if POSIXLY_CORRECT (sic) is set.
-
- update configure script to reflect fix for
- AC_PROG_GCC_TRADITIONAL, which is broken in autoconf 2.5x for Mac
- OS X 10.2.3.
-
- repair check for missing C++ compiler, which is broken in
- autoconf 2.5x by hardcoding it to g++.
+
- 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.
+
+
- correct BUILD_CPPFLAGS substitution in ncurses/Makefile.in, to allow
+ cross-compiling from a separate directory tree.
+
-
- - corrected ifdef's relating to configure check for wchar_t, etc.
-
- remove configure script check to allow -Wconversion for older
- versions of gcc
-
- modify configure script to accommodate libtool 1.5, as well as
- add an parameter to the "--with-libtool" option which can specify
- the pathname of libtool.
-
- change several sed scripts to avoid using "\+" since it is not a
- BRE (basic regular expression). One instance caused terminfo.5 to
- be misformatted on FreeBSD.
-
- use '%' as sed substitute delimiter in run_tic script to avoid
- problems with pathname delimiters such as ':' and '@'.
-
- add -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500 if needed when configuring with
- "--enable-widec", to get
mbstate_t declaration on HPUX
- 11.11.
+
library:
- - adjust include-options in CF_ETIP_DEFINES to avoid missing
- ncurses_dll.h, fixing special definitions that may be needed for
- etip.h.
-
- modify CF_LIB_SUFFIX for Itanium releases of HP-UX, which use a
- ".so" suffix.
-
- improve ifdef's to guard against redefinition of wchar_t and wint_t
- in curses.h.
-
- remove an #undef for KEY_EVENT from curses.tail used in the
- experimental NCURSES_WGETCH_EVENTS feature. The #undef confuses
- Debian
dpkg's build script.
+
+ - 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.
+
+
- modify C++ binding to use some C internal functions to make it
+ compile properly on Solaris (and other platforms).
+
+
- remove check in newwin() that prevents allocating windows that
+ extend beyond the screen (Solaris does this).
+
+
- check for
nl_langinfo(CODESET), 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 setlocale()
+ should be corrected, to make them work properly with
+ UTF-8 encoding.
+
+ In particular, applications which assume (and
+ do not call setlocale()) 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 nl_langinfo(CODESET) is available.
+
+ - 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.
+