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Announcing ncurses 5.1
The ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation of
curses in System V Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo format,
supports pads and color 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
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 distribution includes the library and support utilities, including
a terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), clear(1),
tput(1), tset(1), and a termcap conversion tool captoinfo(1). Full
manual pages are provided for the library and tools.
The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at the GNU
distribution site [1]ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses.
It is also available at [2]ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses.
Release Notes
This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0;
very few applications will require recompilation, depending on the
platform. These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses
5.0 release.
Interface changes:
* made the extended terminal capabilities
(configure --enable-tcap-names) a standard feature (though the
configure script can disable it, it is built by default).
* removed the trace() function and related trace support from the
production library. This is the only interface change that may
cause problems with existing applications linked to shared
libraries, since not all platforms use the minor version number.
* explicitly initialized to zero several data items which were
implicitly initialized, e.g., cur_term. If not explicitly
initialized, their storage type is C (common), and causes problems
linking on some platforms.
* modified curses.h.in, undef'ing some symbols to avoid conflict
with C++ STL.
New features:
* added a new extension, assume_default_colors() to provide better
control over the use of default colors. This is the principal
visible difference between ncurses 5.1 and preceding versions. The
new extension allows an application to specify what colors pair 0
uses.
NOTE: Pair 0 defaults to white on black unless you have invoked
use_default_colors() or set it via assume_default_colors(). An
application that calls start_colors() without setting the
background color will consistently have a black background no
matter what color your terminal's background actually is.
* made several fixes to the terminfo-to-termcap conversion, and have
been using the generated termcaps without further hand-tuning.
This builds on the extension use_extended_names() by adding
"obsolete" termcap strings to terminfo.src
+ modified tic so that if extended names (i.e.,
configure --enable-tcap-names) are active, then tic -x will
also write "obsolete" capabilities that are present in the
terminfo source.
+ added screen's AX capability (for ECMA SGR 39 and 49) to
applicable terminfo entries, use presence of this as a check
for a small improvement in setting default colors.
+ add -a option to tic and infocmp, which retains commented-out
capabilities during source translation/comparison, e.g.,
captoinfo and infotocap.
* implemented limited support for UTF-8, useful with XFree86 xterm:
+ if the configure --enable-widec option is given, append 'w'
to names of the generated libraries (e.g., libncursesw.so) to
avoid conflict with existing ncurses libraries.
+ add a simple UTF-8 output driver to the experimental
wide-character support. If any of the environment variables
LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE or LANG contain the string "UTF-8", this
driver will be used to translate the output to UTF-8.
+ modified view.c to make a rudimentary viewer of UTF-8 text.
* modify raw() and noraw() to clear/restore IEXTEN flag which
affects stty lnext on systems such as FreeBSD
* reordered tests during mouse initialization to allow for gpm to
run in xterm, or for xterm to be used under OS/2 EMX. Also dropped
test for $DISPLAY in favor of the terminfo capability kmous=\E[M
or if $TERM environment variable contains "xterm".
* added configure option --with-manpage-symlinks, which provides for
fully indexing manpage entries by making symbolic links for the
aliases.
* changed unctrl() to render C1 characters (128-159) as ~@, ~A, etc.
* add experimental configure option --enable-colorfgbg to check for
$COLORTERM variable as set by rxvt/aterm/Eterm.
* made the infocmp -F option less verbose.
* dropped support for gnat 3.10 (gnat 3.12 is current).
Major bug fixes:
* modified infocmp -e, -E options to ensure that generated
fallback.c type for Booleans agrees with term.h
* documented a special case of incompatiblity between ncurses 4.2
and 5.0, added a section for this in INSTALL.
* corrected tests for file-descriptors in OS/2 EMX mouse support. A
negative value could be used by FD_SET, causing the select() call
to wait indefinitely.
* made 'tput flash' work properly for xterm by flushing output in
delay_output() when using napms(), and modifying xterm's terminfo
to specify no padding character. Otherwise, xterm's reported baud
rate could mislead ncurses into producing too few padding
characters.
* modified lib_addch.c to allow repeated update to the lower-right
corner, rather than displaying only the first character written
until the cursor is moved. Recent versions of SVr4 curses can
update the lower-right corner, and behave this way.
* modified echo() behavior of getch() to match Solaris curses for
carriage return and backspace (reported by Neil Zanella).
* corrected offsets used for subwindows in wresize()
* modified configure script so AC_MSG_ERROR is temporarily defined
to a warning in AC_PROG_CXX to make it recover from a missing C++
compiler without requiring user to add --without-cxx option
* corrected logic in lib_twait.c as used by lib_mouse.c for GPM
mouse support when poll() is used rather than select().
* made several fixes for buffer overflows, unchecked recursion,
improvements in performance, etc. See the NEWS file for details.
Features of Ncurses
The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4)
curses:
* All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are
documented).
* Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard mapping,
color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and automatic
recognition of keypad and function keys.
* An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting a stack of
windows with backing store, is included.
* An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting a uniform but
flexible interface for menu programming, is included.
* An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting data collection
through on-screen forms, is included.
* Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1)
implementation are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format
SVr4 curses uses.
* The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo entries
for use with less capable curses/terminfo versions such as the
HP/UX and AIX ports.
The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over SVr4:
* The API is 8-bit clean and base-level conformant with the X/OPEN
curses specification, XSI curses (that is, it implements all BASE
level features, but not all EXTENDED features). Most
EXTENDED-level features not directly concerned with wide-character
support are implemented, including many function calls not
supported under SVr4 curses (but portability of all calls is
documented so you can use the SVr4 subset only).
* Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost
corner of the screen if your terminal has an insert-character
capability.
* Ada95 and C++ bindings.
* Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and OS/2
console windows.
* Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm package.
* The function wresize() allows you to resize windows, preserving
their data.
* The function use_default_colors() allows you to use the terminal's
default colors for the default color pair, achieving the effect of
transparent colors.
* The functions keyok() and define_key() allow you to better control
the use of function keys, e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE,
or by defining more than one control sequence to map to a given
key code.
* Support for 16-color terminals, such as aixterm and XFree86 xterm.
* Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now features a
cursor-local-movement computation more efficient than either BSD's
or System V's.
* Super hardware scrolling support. The screen-update code
incorporates a novel, simple, and cheap algorithm that enables it
to make optimal use of hardware scrolling, line-insertion, and
line-deletion for screen-line movements. This algorithm is more
powerful than the 4.4BSD curses quickch() routine.
* Real support for terminals with the magic-cookie glitch. The
screen-update code will refrain from drawing a highlight if the
magic- cookie unattributed spaces required just before the
beginning and after the end would step on a non-space character.
It will automatically shift highlight boundaries when doing so
would make it possible to draw the highlight without changing the
visual appearance of the screen.
* It is possible to generate the library with a list of pre-loaded
fallback entries linked to it so that it can serve those terminal
types even when no terminfo tree or termcap file is accessible
(this may be useful for support of screen-oriented programs that
must run in single-user mode).
* The tic(1)/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the ability
to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and AT&T extension
sets.
* A BSD-like tset(1) utility is provided.
* The ncurses library and utilities will automatically read terminfo
entries from $HOME/.terminfo if it exists, and compile to that
directory if it exists and the user has no write access to the
system directory. This feature makes it easier for users to have
personal terminfo entries without giving up access to the system
terminfo directory.
* You may specify a path of directories to search for compiled
descriptions with the environment variable TERMINFO_DIRS (this
generalizes the feature provided by TERMINFO under stock System
V.)
* In terminfo source files, use capabilities may refer not just to
other entries in the same source file (as in System V) but also to
compiled entries in either the system terminfo directory or the
user's $HOME/.terminfo directory.
* A script (capconvert) is provided to help BSD users transition
from termcap to terminfo. It gathers the information in a TERMCAP
environment variable and/or a ~/.termcap local entries file and
converts it to an equivalent local terminfo tree under
$HOME/.terminfo.
* Automatic fallback to the /etc/termcap file can be compiled in
when it is not possible to build a terminfo tree. This feature is
neither fast nor cheap, you don't want to use it unless you have
to, but it's there.
* The table-of-entries utility toe makes it easy for users to see
exactly what terminal types are available on the system.
* The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro entry point
have a corresponding function which may be linked (and will be
prototype-checked) if the macro definition is disabled with
#undef.
* An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document
provides a narrative introduction to the curses programming
interface.
State of the Package
Numerous bugs present in earlier versions have been fixed; the library
is far more reliable than it used to be. Bounds checking in many
`dangerous' entry points has been improved. The code is now type-safe
according to gcc -Wall. The library has been checked for malloc leaks
and arena corruption by the Purify memory-allocation tester.
The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of applications
including (versions starting with those noted):
cdk
Curses Development Kit
[3]http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html
[4]http://dickey.his.com/cdk.
ded
directory-editor
[5]http://dickey.his.com/ded.
dialog
the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and the
basis for similar applications on GNU/Linux.
[6]http://dickey.his.com/dialog.
lynx
the character-screen WWW browser
[7]http://lynx.isc.org/release.
Midnight Commander 4.1
file manager
[8]www.gnome.org/mc/.
mutt
mail utility
[9]http://www.mutt.org.
ncftp
file-transfer utility
[10]http://www.ncftp.com.
nvi
New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7 and
later.
[11]http://www.bostic.com/vi/.
tin
newsreader, supporting color, MIME
[12]http://www.tin.org.
taper
tape archive utility
[13]http://members.iinet.net.au/~yusuf/taper/.
vh-1.6
Volks-Hypertext browser for the Jargon File
[14]http://www.bg.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html.
as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support alone:
minicom
terminal emulator
[15]http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~walker/minicom.html.
vile
vi-like-emacs
[16]http://dickey.his.com/vile.
The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs
(including a few games).
Who's Who and What's What
The original developers of ncurses are [17]Zeyd Ben-Halim and [18]Eric
S. Raymond. Ongoing work is being done by [19]Thomas Dickey and
[20]J<>rgen Pfeifer. [21]Thomas Dickey acts as the maintainer for the
Free Software Foundation, which holds the copyright on ncurses.
Contact the current maintainers at [22]bug-ncurses@gnu.org.
To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to
bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org containing the line:
subscribe <name>@<host.domain>
This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the development
and testing of this package.
Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release are made
available at [23]ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses.
Future Plans
* Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization
support.
* Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.
We need people to help with these projects. If you are interested in
working 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.
[24]http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo.
You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics not
covered in the terminfo file at [25]Richard Shuford's archive.
References
1. ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses
2. ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses
3. http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html
4. http://dickey.his.com/cdk/cdk.html
5. http://dickey.his.com/ded/ded.html
6. http://dickey.his.com/dialog/dialog.html
7. http://lynx.isc.org/release/
8. file://localhost/usr/build/ncurses/ncurses-5.1-20000704/doc/html/www.gnome.org/mc/
9. http://www.mutt.org/
10. http://www.ncftp.com/
11. http://www.bostic.com/vi/
12. http://www.tin.org/
13. http://members.iinet.net.au/~yusuf/taper/
14. http://www.bg.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html
15. http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~walker/minicom.html
16. http://dickey.his.com/vile/vile.html
17. mailto:zmbenhal@netcom.com
18. http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html
19. mailto:dickey@herndon4.his.com
20. mailto:juergen.pfeifer@gmx.net
21. mailto:dickey@herndon4.his.com
22. mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org
23. ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses
24. http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo
25. http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal_index.html
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