Announcing ncurses @VERSION@
+
@@ -18,12 +19,15 @@ 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. It should port easily to
-any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!
+The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux.
+It has been in use for some time with OpenBSD as the system curses library,
+and on FreeBSD and NetBSD as an external package.
+It should port easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX.
+It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!
The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including a
terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), clear(1), tput(1), tset(1),
@@ -32,333 +36,280 @@ the library and tools.
-This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 and 5.1;
+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 5.1 release.
+These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.4 release.
Interface changes:
-
change type of ospeed variable back to
- short to match its use in legacy applications. It was
- altered after ncurses 4.2 to speed_t to repair a type
- mismatch which was introduced after 1.9.4 in 1995. The principal
- users of termcap continued to use short, which is
- not the same size.
-
- NOTE: A few applications will have to be recompiled
- (about 1% of the programs in a typical Linux distribution,
- 10% of the programs that use ncurses). These are easy to
- identify with nm or strings.
-
-
remove a private function _nc_can_clear_with(), which
- was built with the configure --enable-expanded option but not used.
-
-
add several private functions (prefixed with "_nc_") for tracing
- chtype values in the debug library, and for better
- access and buffer limit checking.
+
terminfo installs "xterm-new" as "xterm" entry rather than
+ "xterm-old" (aka xterm-r6).
+
+
terminfo data is installed using the tic -x option (few systems
+ still use ncurses 4.2).
+
+
modify C++ binding to work with newer C++ compilers by providing
+ initializers and using modern casts. Old-style header names are
+ still used in this release to allow compiling with not-so-old
+ compilers.
+
+
modify parameter type in c++ binding for insch() and mvwinsch() to
+ be consistent with underlying ncurses library (was char, is chtype).
+
+
change NCursesWindow::err_handler() to a virtual function.
+
+
form and menu libraries now work with wide-character data.
+ Applications which bypassed the form library and manipulated the
+ FIELD.buf data directly will not work properly with libformw,
+ since that no longer points to an array of char. The
+ set_field_buffer() and field_buffer() functions translate to/from
+ the actual field data.
+
+
+
add symbol to curses.h which can be used to suppress include of
+ stdbool.h, e.g.,
+
change SP->_current_attr to a pointer, adjust ifdef's to ensure
+ that libtinfo.so and libtinfow.so have the same ABI. The reason
+ for this is that the corresponding data which belongs to the
+ upper-level ncurses library has a different size in each model.
+
+
winnstr() now returns multibyte character strings for the
+ wide-character configuration.
+
+
assume_default_colors() no longer requires that
+ use_default_colors() be called first.
+
+
data_ahead() now works with wide-characters.
+
+
slk_set() and slk_wset() now accept and store multibyte or
+ multicolumn characters.
+
+
start_color() now returns OK if colors have
+ already been started.
+ start_color() also returns ERR if it cannot allocate memory.
+
+
pair_content() now returns -1 for consistency with init_pair()
+ if it corresponds to the default-color.
+
+
unctrl() now returns null if its parameter does not correspond
+ to an unsigned char.
+
New features and improvements:
-
rewrote tgoto() to make it better support existing
- termcap applications which use hardcoded strings rather than obtain
- all of their information from the termcap file. If the string does
- not appear to be a terminfo string (i.e., does not refer to a "%p"
- parameter, or terminfo-style padding), and termcap support is configured, tgoto()
- will interpret it as termcap. Otherwise, as before, it will use
- tparm().
-
-
to ensure that the tgoto() changes work properly,
- added checks to tic which report capabilities that do
- not reference the expected number of parameters.
-
-
new configure script options:
-
-
option --disable-root-environ adds runtime checks
- which tell ncurses to disregard $TERMINFO and similar environment
- variables if the current user is root, or running setuid/setgid.
-
-
option --disable-assumed-color allows you to use the
- pre-5.1 convention of default colors used for color-pair 0 to be
- configured (see assume_default_colors()).
-
-
implement configure script options that transform installed
- program names, e.g., --program-prefix, including the
- manpage names and cross references.
-
-
option --with-database allows you to specify a
- different terminfo source-file to install. On OS/2 EMX, the
- default is misc/emx.src, otherwise misc/terminfo.src
-
-
option --with-default-terminfo-dir allows you to
- specify the default terminfo database directory.
-
-
option --with-libtool allows you to build with
- libtool.
NOTE: libtool
- uses a different notation for numbering shared library versions
- from the existing ncurses configuration.
-
-
option --with-manpage-tbl causes the manpages to be
- preprocessed by tbl(1) prior to installation,
-
-
option --without-curses-h causes the installation
- process to install curses.h as ncurses.h and make appropriate
- changes to headers and manpages.
-
-
-
modified configure script options:
-
-
change symbol used by the --install-prefix configure
- option from INSTALL_PREFIX to DESTDIR
- (the latter has become common usage although the name is
- misleading).
-
-
modify ld -rpath options (e.g., Linux, and Solaris)
- to use an absolute pathname for the build tree's lib directory,
- avoiding confusion with directories relative to the current one
- with the installed programs.
-
-
modified misc/run_tic.in to use
- tic -o, to eliminate dependency on
- $TERMINFO variable for installs.
-
-
-
terminfo database:
-
-
updated xterm terminfo entries to match XFree86 xterm patch #146.
-
-
added amiga-vnc,
- Matrix Orbital, and
- QNX qansi to misc/terminfo.src.
-
-
added os2 entry to misc/emx.src.
-
-
add S0 and E0 extensions to screen's terminfo entry
- since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
- to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
- versions of ncurses.
-
-
-
improvements to program usability:
-
-
modify programs to use curses_version() string to
- report the version of ncurses with which they are compiled rather
- than the NCURSES_VERSION string. The function returns the patch
- level in addition to the major and minor version numbers.
-
-
modify tput program so it can be renamed or invoked via a link as
- 'reset' or 'init', producing the same effect as tput reset or tput init.
-
-
add error checking to infocmp's -v and -m options to ensure that
- the option value is indeed a number.
-
-
-
improved performance:
-
-
replace a lookup table in lib_vidattr.c used to decode
- no_color_video with a logic expression which is faster.
-
+
library
+
+
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.
+
+
+
+
add NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html by Pradeep Padala
+ (see http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/).
+
+
programs:
+
+
infocmp:
+
+
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:
+
+
+
+
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:
+
+
+
+
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:
-
correct manlinks.sed script introduced in ncurses 5.1
- to avoid using ERE "\+", which is not understood by standard versions
- of sed. This happens to work with GNU sed,
- but is not portable, and was the initial motivation for this release.
-
-
remove "hpux10.*" case from CF_SHARED_OPTS configure script macro.
- This differed from the "hpux*" case by using reversed symbolic
- links, which made the 5.1 version not match the configuration of
- 5.0 shared libraries.
-
-
guard against corrupt terminfo data:
-
-
modify tparm() to disallow arithmetic on strings,
- analyze the varargs list to read strings as strings and numbers as
- numbers.
-
-
modify tparm()'s internal function
- spop() to treat a null pointer as an empty string.
-
-
modify parse_format() in lib_tparm.c to ignore
- precision if it is longer than 10000.
-
-
rewrote limit checks in lib_mvcur.c using new functions
- _nc_safe_strcat(), etc. Made other related changes to
- check lengths used for strcat() and
- strcpy().
-
-
-
corrections to screen optimization:
-
-
added special case in lib_vidattr.c to reset underline and
- standout for devices that have no sgr0 defined.
-
-
change handling of non_dest_scroll_region in
- tty_update.c to clear text after it is shifted in rather than before
- shifting out. Also correct row computation.
-
-
modify rs2 capability in xterm-r6 and similar entries
- where cursor save/restore bracketed the sequence for resetting video
- attributes. The cursor restore would undo that.
-
-
-
UTF-8 support:
-
-
when checking LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables
- for UTF-8 locale, ignore those which are set to an empty value, as
- per SUSV2.
-
-
encode 0xFFFD in UTF-8 with 3 bytes, not 2.
-
-
modify _nc_utf8_outch() to avoid sign-extension when
- checking for out-of-range value.
-
-
-
other library fixes:
-
-
added checks for an empty $HOME environment
- variable, to avoid retrieving terminfo descriptions from
- ./.terminfo .
-
-
change functions _nc_parse_entry() and
- postprocess_termcap() to avoid using
- strtok(), because it is non-reentrant.
-
-
initialize fds[] array to 0's in
- _nc_timed_wait(); apparently poll() only
- sets the revents members of that array when there is
- activity corresponding to the related file.
-
-
add a check for null pointer in Make_Enum_Type().
-
-
fix a heap problem with the c++ binding.
-
-
correct missing includes for <string.h> in several places,
- including the C++ binding. This is not noted by gcc unless we use
- the -fno-builtin option.
-
-
-
several fixes for tic:
-
-
add a check for empty buffers returned by fgets() in
- comp_scan.c next_char() function, in case
- tic is run on a non-text file (fixes a core dump).
-
-
modify tic to verify that its inputs are really files,
- in case someone tries to read a directory (or
- /dev/zero).
-
-
correct an uninitialized parameter to open_tempfile()
- in tic.c which made "tic -I" give an ambiguous error message about
- tmpnam.
-
-
correct logic in adjust_cancels(), which did not check
- both alternatives when reclassifying an extended name between
- boolean, number and string, causing an infinite loop in
- tic.
-
-
-
using new checks in tic for parameter counts in
- capability strings, found/fixed several errors both in the
- terminfo database and in the include/Caps file.
-
-
modified several terminfo capability strings, including the
- definitions for setaf, setab, in include/Caps to indicate that the
- entries are parameterized. This information is used to tell which
- strings are translated when converting to termcap. This fixes a
- problem where the generated termcap would contain a spurious "%p1"
- for the terminfo "%p1%d".
-
-
correct parameter counts in include/Caps for dclk as well as some
- printer-specific capabilities: csnm, defc, scs, scsd, smgtp, smglp.
-
-
-
various fixes for install scripts used to support configure
- --srcdir and --with-install-prefix.
-
-
correct several mismatches between manpage filename and ".TH"
- directives, renaming dft_fgbg.3x to default_colors.3x and
- menu_attribs.3x to menu_attributes.3x.
+
+
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.
+
+
cells in the WINDOW which are continuations of a multicolumn
+ character are encoded differently, making repainting more
+ reliable.
+
+
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.
+
+
make setcchar() now works when its wchar_t* parameter is
+ pointing to a string which contains more data than can be converted.
+
+
win_wchnstr() now works for more than one cell.
+
+
resizeterm() now processes all levels of window hierarchy.
+
+
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.
+
+
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.
+
Portability:
-
configure script:
-
-
newer config.guess, config.sub, including changes to support OS/2
- EMX. The configure script for OS/2 EMX still relies on a patch
- since there is no (working) support for that platform in the main
- autoconf distribution.
-
-
make configure script checks on variables $GCC and
- $GXX consistently compare against 'yes' rather than
- test if they are nonnull, since either may be set to the
- corresponding name of the C or C++ compiler.
-
-
change configure script to use AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM rather than
- AC_CANONICAL_HOST, which means that configure --target
- will set a default program-prefix.
-
-
modify the check for big-core to force a couple of memory
- accesses, which may work as needed for older/less-capable machines
- (if not, there's still the explicit configure option).
-
-
modify configure test for tcgetattr() to allow for
- old implementations, e.g., on BeOS, which only defined it as a
- macro.
-
-
add configure check for filesystems (such as OS/2 EMX) which do
- not distinguish between upper/lowercase filenames, use this to fix
- tags rules in makefiles.
-
-
add MKncurses_def.sh to generate fallback definitions for
- ncurses_cfg.h, to quiet gcc -Wundef warnings, modified ifdef's in
- code to consistently use "#if" rather than "#ifdef".
-
-
change most remaining unquoted parameters of test in
- configure script to use quotes, for instance fixing a problem in the
- --disable-database option.
-
-
modify scripts so that "make install.data" works on OS/2 EMX.
-
-
modify scripts and makefiles so the Ada95 directory builds on
- OS/2 EMX.
-
-
-
library:
-
-
replaced case-statement in _nc_tracebits() for CSIZE
- with a table to simplify working around implementations that define
- random combinations of the related macros to zero.
-
-
improved OS/2 mouse support by retrying as a 2-button mouse if code
- fails to set up a 3-button mouse.
-
-
added private entrypoint _nc_basename(), used to
- consolidate related code in progs, as well as accommodating OS/2 EMX
- pathnames.
-
-
alter definition of NCURSES_CONST to make it non-empty.
-
-
redefine 'TEXT' in menu.h for AMIGA, since it is reported to have
- an (unspecified) symbol conflict.
-
-
-
programs:
-
-
modified progs/tset.c and tack/sysdep.c to build with sgttyb
- interface if neither termio or termios is available. Tested this
- with FreeBSD 2.1.5 (which does have termios - but the sgttyb does
- work).
-
-
+
configure script:
+
+
new options:
+
+
--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:
+
+
+
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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
library:
+
+
+
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.
+
+
Features of Ncurses
@@ -474,61 +425,60 @@ including (versions starting with those noted):
-The original developers of ncurses are Zeyd Ben-Halim and
-Eric S. Raymond.
+Zeyd Ben-Halim
+started it from a previous package pcurses, written by Pavel Curtis.
+Eric S. Raymond
+continued development.
+Jürgen Pfeifer wrote most of the form and menu libraries.
Ongoing work is being done by
-Thomas Dickey
-and
-Jürgen Pfeifer.
-Thomas Dickey
-acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation, which holds the
-copyright on ncurses.
+Thomas Dickey.
+Thomas Dickey
+acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation,
+which holds the copyright on ncurses.
Contact the current maintainers at
bug-ncurses@gnu.org.
@@ -561,7 +511,7 @@ This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the development and
testing of this package.
@@ -573,14 +523,16 @@ on them, please join the ncurses list.
Other Related Resources
-The distribution includes and uses a version of the terminfo-format
-terminal description file maintained by Eric Raymond.
-http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo.
+The distribution provides a newer version of the terminfo-format
+terminal description file maintained by
+Eric Raymond .
+Unlike the older version, the termcap and terminfo data are provided
+in the same file.
You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics
not covered in the terminfo file at
Richard Shuford's
-archive.
+archive .