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7<TITLE>Announcing ncurses 5.5</TITLE>
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13<H1>Announcing ncurses 5.5</H1>
14
15The ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation of
16curses in System V Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo format,
17supports pads and color
18and multiple highlights and forms characters and function-key mapping,
19and has all the other SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD curses.<P>
20
21In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared that he
22considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the keepers of
23Unix releases such as BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to switch over to
24ncurses.<P>
25
26The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux.
27It has been in use for some time with OpenBSD as the system curses library,
28and on FreeBSD and NetBSD as an external package.
29It should port easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX.
30It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!<P>
31
32The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including a
33terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), clear(1), tput(1), tset(1),
34and a termcap conversion tool captoinfo(1). Full manual pages are provided for
35the library and tools.<P>
36
37The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at
38the GNU distribution site
39<A HREF="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/</A>&nbsp;.
40<br>It is also available at
41<A HREF="ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</A>&nbsp;.
42
43<H1>Release Notes</H1>
44
45This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0 through 5.4;
46very few applications will require recompilation, depending on the platform.
47These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.4 release.
48<p>
49Interface changes:
50<ul>
51 <li>terminfo installs "xterm-new" as "xterm" entry rather than
52 "xterm-old" (aka xterm-r6).
53
54 <li>terminfo data is installed using the tic -x option (few systems
55 still use ncurses 4.2).
56
57 <li>modify C++ binding to work with newer C++ compilers by providing
58 initializers and using modern casts. Old-style header names are
59 still used in this release to allow compiling with not-so-old
60 compilers.
61
62 <li>modify parameter type in c++ binding for insch() and mvwinsch() to
63 be consistent with underlying ncurses library (was char, is chtype).
64
65 <li>change NCursesWindow::err_handler() to a virtual function.
66
67 <li>form and menu libraries now work with wide-character data.
68 Applications which bypassed the form library and manipulated the
69 FIELD.buf data directly will not work properly with libformw,
70 since that no longer points to an array of char. The
71 set_field_buffer() and field_buffer() functions translate to/from
72 the actual field data.
73
74
75 <li>add symbol to curses.h which can be used to suppress include of
76 stdbool.h, e.g.,
77 <pre>
78 #define NCURSES_ENABLE_STDBOOL_H 0
79 #include &lt;curses.h&gt;
80 </pre>
81
82 <li>change SP->_current_attr to a pointer, adjust ifdef's to ensure
83 that libtinfo.so and libtinfow.so have the same ABI. The reason
84 for this is that the corresponding data which belongs to the
85 upper-level ncurses library has a different size in each model.
86
87 <li>winnstr() now returns multibyte character strings for the
88 wide-character configuration.
89
90 <li>assume_default_colors() no longer requires that
91 use_default_colors() be called first.
92
93 <li>data_ahead() now works with wide-characters.
94
95 <li>slk_set() and slk_wset() now accept and store multibyte or
96 multicolumn characters.
97
98 <li>start_color() now returns OK if colors have
99 already been started.
100 start_color() also returns ERR if it cannot allocate memory.
101
102 <li>pair_content() now returns -1 for consistency with init_pair()
103 if it corresponds to the default-color.
104
105 <li>unctrl() now returns null if its parameter does not correspond
106 to an unsigned char.
107
108</ul>
109New features and improvements:
110<ul>
111 <li>library
112 <ul>
113 <li>environment variable NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS supports
114 miscellaneous terminal emulators which ignore alternate
115 character set escape sequences when in UTF-8 mode.
116
117 <li>modify initialization of key lookup table so that if an extended
118 capability (tic -x) string is defined, and its name begins with 'k',
119 ncurses will automatically treat it as a key.
120
121 <li>change GPM initialization, using dl library to load it
122 dynamically at runtime.
123
124 <li>form, menu and panel libraries support debug-tracing.
125
126 </ul>
127
128 <li>add NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html by Pradeep Padala
129 (see http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/).
130
131 <li>programs:
132
133 <li>infocmp:
134 <ul>
135 <li>The -i option now matches 8-bit controls against its table
136 entries, e.g., so it can analyze the xterm-8bit entry.
137
138 <li>add "-x" option to infocmp like tic's "-x", for use in "-F"
139 comparisons. This modifies infocmp to only report extended
140 capabilities if the -x option is given, making this more
141 consistent with tic. Some scripts may break, since infocmp
142 previous gave this information without an option.
143
144 </ul>
145
146 <li>tic:
147
148 <ul>
149
150 <li>modify termcap-parsing to retain 2-character aliases at the
151 beginning of an entry if the "-x" option is used in tic.
152
153 <li>filter out long extended names when translating to termcap
154 format. Only two characters are permissible for termcap
155 capability names.
156
157 <li>correct translation of "%%" in terminfo format to termcap,
158 e.g., using "tic -C".
159
160 <li>modify the "-c -v" options to ignore delays when comparing
161 strings. Also modify it to ignore a canceled sgr string,
162 e.g., for terminals which cannot properly combine attributes
163 in one control sequence.
164
165 <li>add a check for improperly ended strings, i.e., where a
166 following line begins in column 1.
167
168 <li>add a check in tic for terminfo entries having an sgr0 but no
169 sgr string. This confuses Tru64 and HPUX curses when combined
170 with color, e.g., making them leave line-drawing characters in
171 odd places.
172
173 <li>add check (with debug configuration) that provides about the
174 runtime changes that would be made to sgr0 for termcap
175 applications.
176
177 </ul>
178
179 <li>tset:
180
181 <ul>
182
183 <li>add -c and -w options to allow user to suppress ncurses'
184 resizing of the terminal emulator window in the special case
185 where it is not able to detect the true size.
186
187 </ul>
188
189</ul>
190Major bug fixes:
191<ul>
192
193 <li>improve logic in tgetent() which adjusts the termcap "me" string
194 to work with ISO-2022 string used in xterm-new.
195 This is a feature that was incompletely implemented in ncurses 5.3.
196 ncurses attempts to provide termcap clients with the portion of
197 the sgr0 (termcap "me") string that does not reset line-drawing.
198
199 <li>cells in the WINDOW which are continuations of a multicolumn
200 character are encoded differently, making repainting more
201 reliable.
202
203 <li>amend change to setupterm() in ncurses 5.4 (20030405) which would
204 reuse the value of cur_term if the same output was selected. This
205 now reuses it only when setupterm() is called from tgetent(),
206 which has no notion of separate SCREENs. Note that tgetent() must
207 be called after initscr() or newterm() to use this feature.
208
209 <li>make setcchar() now works when its wchar_t* parameter is
210 pointing to a string which contains more data than can be converted.
211
212 <li>win_wchnstr() now works for more than one cell.
213
214 <li>resizeterm() now processes all levels of window hierarchy.
215
216 <li>disable GPM mouse support when $TERM happens to be prefixed with
217 "xterm". Gpm_Open() would otherwise assert that it can deal with
218 mouse events in this case.
219
220 <li>add SP-&gt;_screen_acs_map[], used to ensure that mapping of missing
221 line-drawing characters is handled properly. For example, ACS_DARROW
222 is absent from xterm-new, and it was coincidentally displayed the
223 same as ACS_BTEE.
224
225</ul>
226
227Portability:
228<ul>
229 <li>configure script:
230 <ul>
231 <li>new options:
232 <dl>
233 <dt>--enable-largefile
234 <dd>set compiler and linker flags to use largefile support.
235
236 <dt>--enable-ext-colors
237 <dd>Allow encoding of 256 foreground
238 and background colors, e.g., with the xterm-256color or
239 xterm-88color terminfo entries.
240 This requires ABI 6 because it changes the size of cchar_t.
241
242 <dt>--enable-ext-mouse
243 <dd>This defines NCURSES_MOUSE_VERSION 2, and modifies the encoding of
244 mouse events to support wheel mice, which may transmit buttons
245 4 and 5. This works with xterm and similar terminal
246 emulators.
247 This requires ABI 6 because it changes the encoding of
248 mouse events.
249
250 <dt>--with-chtype
251 <dd>overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of chtype
252
253 <dt>--with-mmask-t
254 <dd>overriding of the non-LP64 model's use of mmask_t
255
256 <dt>--without-xterm-new
257 <dd>Installs "xterm-old" as the "xterm" entry of the terminfo
258 database.
259
260 </dl>
261
262 <li>The --with-termlib option now accepts a value which sets
263 the name of the terminfo library. This would allow a packager to
264 build libtinfow.so renamed to coincide with libtinfo.so
265
266 <li>fixes/improvements for cross-compiling:
267
268 <ul>
269 <li>suppress $suffix in misc/run_tic.sh when cross-compiling.
270 This allows cross-compiles to use the host's tic program to
271 handle the "make install.data" step.
272
273 <li>correct BUILD_CPPFLAGS substitution in ncurses/Makefile.in, to allow
274 cross-compiling from a separate directory tree.
275
276 </ul>
277
278 </ul>
279
280 <li>library:
281 <ul>
282
283 <li>add ifdef's for _LP64 in curses.h to avoid using wasteful
284 64-bits for chtype and mmask_t, but add configure option
285 --disable-lp64 in case anyone used that configuration.
286
287 <li>modify C++ binding to use some C internal functions to make it
288 compile properly on Solaris (and other platforms).
289
290 <li>remove check in newwin() that prevents allocating windows that
291 extend beyond the screen (Solaris does this).
292
293 <li>check for <code>nl_langinfo(CODESET)</code>, use it if available.
294 This replaces ad hoc tests of environment variables to
295 check if the terminal is setup for UTF-8 encoding.
296 Applications which do not call <code>setlocale()</code>
297 should be corrected, to make them work properly with
298 UTF-8 encoding.
299 <br>
300 <strong>In particular, applications which assume (and
301 do not call <code>setlocale()</code>) that
302 Latin-1 codes are printable will no longer work in
303 a UTF-8 locale since the ad hoc check of environment
304 variables to see if the locale was UTF-8 is not used
305 when <code>nl_langinfo(CODESET)</code> is available.</strong>
306
307 <li>use setlocale() to query the program's current locale rather
308 than using getenv(). This supports applications which rely
309 upon legacy treatment of 8-bit characters when the locale is
310 not initialized.
311
312 </ul>
313</ul>
314
315<H1>Features of Ncurses</H1>
316
317The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4) curses:
318
319<UL>
320<LI>All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are documented).
321<LI>Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard mapping, color,
322forms-drawing with ACS characters, and automatic recognition of keypad
323and function keys.
324<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting
325a stack of windows with backing store, is included.
326<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting
327a uniform but flexible interface for menu programming, is included.
328<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting
329data collection through on-screen forms, is included.
330<LI>Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1) implementation
331are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format SVr4 curses uses.
332<LI>The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo
333entries for use with less capable <STRONG>curses</STRONG>/<STRONG>terminfo</STRONG>
334versions such as the HP/UX and AIX ports.</UL>
335
336The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over SVr4:
337
338<UL>
339<LI>The API is 8-bit clean and base-level conformant with the X/OPEN curses
340specification, XSI curses (that is, it implements all BASE level features,
341but not all EXTENDED features). Most EXTENDED-level features not directly
342concerned with wide-character support are implemented, including many
343function calls not supported under SVr4 curses (but portability of all
344calls is documented so you can use the SVr4 subset only).
345<LI>Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost corner
346of the screen if your terminal has an insert-character capability.
347<LI>Ada95 and C++ bindings.
348<LI>Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and OS/2 console windows.
349<LI>Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm package.
350<LI>The function <CODE>wresize()</CODE> allows you to resize windows, preserving
351their data.
352<LI>The function <CODE>use_default_colors()</CODE> allows you to
353use the terminal's default colors for the default color pair,
354achieving the effect of transparent colors.
355<LI>The functions <CODE>keyok()</CODE>
356and <CODE>define_key()</CODE> allow
357you to better control the use of function keys,
358e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE,
359or by defining more than one control sequence to map to a given key code.
360<LI>Support for 16-color terminals, such as aixterm and XFree86 xterm.
361<LI>Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now features a
362cursor-local-movement computation more efficient than either BSD's
363or System V's.
364<LI>Super hardware scrolling support. The screen-update code incorporates
365a novel, simple, and cheap algorithm that enables it to make optimal
366use of hardware scrolling, line-insertion, and line-deletion
367for screen-line movements. This algorithm is more powerful than
368the 4.4BSD curses quickch() routine.
369<LI>Real support for terminals with the magic-cookie glitch. The
370screen-update code will refrain from drawing a highlight if the magic-
371cookie unattributed spaces required just before the beginning and
372after the end would step on a non-space character. It will
373automatically shift highlight boundaries when doing so would make it
374possible to draw the highlight without changing the visual appearance
375of the screen.
376<LI>It is possible to generate the library with a list of pre-loaded
377fallback entries linked to it so that it can serve those terminal types even
378when no terminfo tree or termcap file is accessible (this may be useful
379for support of screen-oriented programs that must run in single-user mode).
380<LI>The tic(1)/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the
381ability to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and
382AT&amp;T extension sets.
383<LI>A BSD-like tset(1) utility is provided.
384<LI>The ncurses library and utilities will automatically read terminfo
385entries from $HOME/.terminfo if it exists, and compile to that directory
386if it exists and the user has no write access to the system directory.
387This feature makes it easier for users to have personal terminfo entries
388without giving up access to the system terminfo directory.
389<LI>You may specify a path of directories to search for compiled
390descriptions with the environment variable TERMINFO_DIRS (this
391generalizes the feature provided by TERMINFO under stock System V.)
392<LI>In terminfo source files, use capabilities may refer not just to
393other entries in the same source file (as in System V) but also to
394compiled entries in either the system terminfo directory or the user's
395$HOME/.terminfo directory.
396<LI>A script (<STRONG>capconvert</STRONG>) is provided to help BSD users
397transition from termcap to terminfo. It gathers the information in a
398TERMCAP environment variable and/or a ~/.termcap local entries file
399and converts it to an equivalent local terminfo tree under $HOME/.terminfo.
400<LI>Automatic fallback to the /etc/termcap file can be compiled in
401when it is not possible to build a terminfo tree. This feature is neither
402fast nor cheap, you don't want to use it unless you have to,
403but it's there.
404<LI>The table-of-entries utility <STRONG>toe</STRONG> makes it easy for users to
405see exactly what terminal types are available on the system.
406<LI>The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro entry
407point have a corresponding function which may be linked (and will be
408prototype-checked) if the macro definition is disabled with
409<CODE>#undef</CODE>.
410<LI>An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document provides
411a narrative introduction to the curses programming interface.
412</UL>
413
414<H1>State of the Package</H1>
415
416Numerous bugs present in earlier versions have been fixed; the
417library is far more reliable than it used to be. Bounds checking in many
418`dangerous' entry points has been improved. The code is now type-safe
419according to gcc -Wall. The library has been checked for malloc leaks and
420arena corruption by the Purify memory-allocation tester.<P>
421
422The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of applications
423including (versions starting with those noted):
424<DL>
425<DT> cdk
426<DD> Curses Development Kit
427<br>
428<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/cdk/">http://invisible-island.net/cdk/</A>
429<br>
430<A HREF="http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/">http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/</a>
431<DT> ded
432<DD> directory-editor
433<br>
434<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/ded/">http://invisible-island.net/ded/</A>
435<DT> dialog
436<DD> the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and the basis
437for similar applications on GNU/Linux.
438<br>
439<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/dialog/">http://invisible-island.net/dialog/</A>
440<DT> lynx
441<DD> the character-screen WWW browser
442<br>
443<A HREF="http://lynx.isc.org/release/">http://lynx.isc.org/release/</A>
444<DT> Midnight Commander
445<DD> file manager
446<br>
447<A HREF="http://www.ibiblio.org/mc/">http://www.ibiblio.org/mc/</A>
448<DT> mutt
449<DD> mail utility
450<br>
451<A HREF="http://www.mutt.org/">http://www.mutt.org/</A>
452<DT> ncftp
453<DD> file-transfer utility
454<br>
455<A HREF="http://www.ncftp.com/">http://www.ncftp.com/</A>
456<DT> nvi
457<DD> New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7 and later.
458<br>
459<A HREF="http://www.bostic.com/vi/">http://www.bostic.com/vi/</A>
460<br>
461<DT> pinfo
462<DD> Lynx-like info browser.
463<A HREF="http://dione.ids.pl/~pborys/software/pinfo/">http://dione.ids.pl/~pborys/software/pinfo/</A>
464<DT> tin
465<DD> newsreader, supporting color, MIME
466<A HREF="http://www.tin.org/">http://www.tin.org/</A>
467<DT> vh-1.6
468<DD> Volks-Hypertext browser for the Jargon File
469<br>
470<A HREF="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html">http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html</A>
471</DL>
472as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support alone:
473<DL>
474<DT> minicom
475<DD> terminal emulator
476<br>
477<A HREF="http://www.netsonic.fi/~walker/minicom.html">http://www.netsonic.fi/~walker/minicom.html</A>
478<DT> vile
479<DD> vi-like-emacs
480<br>
481<A HREF="http://invisible-island.net/vile/">http://invisible-island.net/vile/</A>
482</DL>
483<P>
484
485The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs (including
486a few games).
487
488<H2>Who's Who and What's What</H2>
489
490Zeyd Ben-Halim
491started it from a previous package pcurses, written by Pavel Curtis.
492Eric S. Raymond
493continued development.
494J&uuml;rgen Pfeifer wrote most of the form and menu libraries.
495Ongoing work is being done by
496<A HREF="mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net">Thomas Dickey</A>.
497Thomas Dickey
498acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation,
499which holds the copyright on ncurses.
500Contact the current maintainers at
501<A HREF="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">bug-ncurses@gnu.org</A>.
502<P>
503
504To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to
505<CODE>bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org</CODE> containing the line:
506<PRE>
507 subscribe &lt;name&gt;@&lt;host.domain&gt;
508</PRE>
509
510This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the development and
511testing of this package.<P>
512
513Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release are made available at
514<A HREF="ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</A>&nbsp;.
515
516<H2>Future Plans</H2>
517<UL>
518<LI>Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization support.
519<LI>Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.
520</UL>
521We need people to help with these projects. If you are interested in working
522on them, please join the ncurses list.
523
524<H2>Other Related Resources</H2>
525
526The distribution provides a newer version of the terminfo-format
527terminal description file maintained by
528<A HREF="http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/">Eric Raymond</A>&nbsp;.
529Unlike the older version, the termcap and terminfo data are provided
530in the same file.<P>
531
532You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics
533not covered in the terminfo file at
534<A HREF="http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal_index.html">Richard Shuford's
535archive</A>&nbsp;.
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