3 The ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation of
4 curses in System V Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo format,
5 supports pads and color and multiple highlights and forms characters
6 and function-key mapping, and has all the other SYSV-curses
7 enhancements over BSD curses.
9 In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared that he
10 considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the keepers of Unix
11 releases such as BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to switch over to ncurses.
13 The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It has been in use for
14 some time with OpenBSD as the system curses library, and on FreeBSD
15 and NetBSD as an external package. It should port easily to any
16 ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!
18 The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including
19 a terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), clear(1),
20 tput(1), tset(1), and a termcap conversion tool captoinfo(1). Full
21 manual pages are provided for the library and tools.
23 The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at the GNU
24 distribution site [1]ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/ .
25 It is also available at [2]ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ .
29 This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0
30 through 5.8; very few applications will require recompilation,
31 depending on the platform. These are the highlights from the
32 change-log since ncurses 5.8 release.
34 This is a bug-fix release, correcting a small number of urgent
35 problems in the ncurses library from the 5.8 release.
37 It also improves the Ada95 binding:
38 * fixes a longstanding portability problem with its use of the
39 [3]set_field_type function. Because that function uses
40 variable-length argument lists, its interface with gnat does not
41 work with certain platforms.
42 * improves configurability and portability, particularly when built
43 separately from the main ncurses tree. The 5.8 release introduced
44 scripts which can be used to construct separate tarballs for the
45 Ada95 and ncurses examples.
46 Those were a proof of concept. For the 5.9 release, those scripts
47 are augmented with rpm- and dpkg-scripts used in test builds
48 against a variety of gnat- and system ncurses versions as old as
49 gnat 3.15 and ncurses 5.4 (see snapshots and systems tested
51 * additional improvements were made for portability of the ncurses
52 examples, adding rpm- and dpkg-scripts for test-builds. See
53 [5]this page for snapshots and other information.
57 The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4)
59 * All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are
61 * Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard mapping,
62 color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and automatic
63 recognition of keypad and function keys.
64 * An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting a stack of
65 windows with backing store, is included.
66 * An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting a uniform but
67 flexible interface for menu programming, is included.
68 * An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting data collection
69 through on-screen forms, is included.
70 * Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1)
71 implementation are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format
73 * The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo entries
74 for use with less capable curses/terminfo versions such as the
77 The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over SVr4:
78 * The API is 8-bit clean and base-level conformant with the X/OPEN
79 curses specification, XSI curses (that is, it implements all BASE
80 level features, and most EXTENDED features). It includes many
81 function calls not supported under SVr4 curses (but portability of
82 all calls is documented so you can use the SVr4 subset only).
83 * Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost
84 corner of the screen if your terminal has an insert-character
86 * Ada95 and C++ bindings.
87 * Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and FreeBSD
88 and OS/2 console windows.
89 * Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm package.
90 * The function wresize allows you to resize windows, preserving
92 * The function use_default_colors allows you to use the terminal's
93 default colors for the default color pair, achieving the effect of
95 * The functions keyok and define_key allow you to better control the
96 use of function keys, e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE, or by
97 defining more than one control sequence to map to a given key
99 * Support for 256-color terminals, such as modern xterm, when
100 configured using the --enable-ext-colors option.
101 * Support for 16-color terminals, such as aixterm and modern xterm.
102 * Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now features a
103 cursor-local-movement computation more efficient than either BSD's
105 * Super hardware scrolling support. The screen-update code
106 incorporates a novel, simple, and cheap algorithm that enables it
107 to make optimal use of hardware scrolling, line-insertion, and
108 line-deletion for screen-line movements. This algorithm is more
109 powerful than the 4.4BSD curses quickch routine.
110 * Real support for terminals with the magic-cookie glitch. The
111 screen-update code will refrain from drawing a highlight if the
112 magic- cookie unattributed spaces required just before the
113 beginning and after the end would step on a non-space character.
114 It will automatically shift highlight boundaries when doing so
115 would make it possible to draw the highlight without changing the
116 visual appearance of the screen.
117 * It is possible to generate the library with a list of pre-loaded
118 fallback entries linked to it so that it can serve those terminal
119 types even when no terminfo tree or termcap file is accessible
120 (this may be useful for support of screen-oriented programs that
121 must run in single-user mode).
122 * The tic(1)/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the ability
123 to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and AT&T extension
125 * A BSD-like tset(1) utility is provided.
126 * The ncurses library and utilities will automatically read terminfo
127 entries from $HOME/.terminfo if it exists, and compile to that
128 directory if it exists and the user has no write access to the
129 system directory. This feature makes it easier for users to have
130 personal terminfo entries without giving up access to the system
132 * You may specify a path of directories to search for compiled
133 descriptions with the environment variable TERMINFO_DIRS (this
134 generalizes the feature provided by TERMINFO under stock System
136 * In terminfo source files, use capabilities may refer not just to
137 other entries in the same source file (as in System V) but also to
138 compiled entries in either the system terminfo directory or the
139 user's $HOME/.terminfo directory.
140 * A script (capconvert) is provided to help BSD users transition
141 from termcap to terminfo. It gathers the information in a TERMCAP
142 environment variable and/or a ~/.termcap local entries file and
143 converts it to an equivalent local terminfo tree under
145 * Automatic fallback to the /etc/termcap file can be compiled in
146 when it is not possible to build a terminfo tree. This feature is
147 neither fast nor cheap, you don't want to use it unless you have
149 * The table-of-entries utility toe makes it easy for users to see
150 exactly what terminal types are available on the system.
151 * The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro entry point
152 have a corresponding function which may be linked (and will be
153 prototype-checked) if the macro definition is disabled with
155 * An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document
156 provides a narrative introduction to the curses programming
161 Numerous bugs present in earlier versions have been fixed; the library
162 is far more reliable than it used to be. Bounds checking in many
163 `dangerous' entry points has been improved. The code is now type-safe
164 according to gcc -Wall. The library has been checked for malloc leaks
165 and arena corruption by the Purify memory-allocation tester.
167 The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of applications
168 including (versions starting with those noted):
171 Curses Development Kit
172 [6]http://invisible-island.net/cdk/
173 [7]http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/
177 [8]http://invisible-island.net/ded/
180 the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and the
181 basis for similar applications on GNU/Linux.
182 [9]http://invisible-island.net/dialog/
185 the character-screen WWW browser
186 [10]http://lynx.isc.org/release/
190 [11]http://www.midnight-commander.org/
194 [12]http://www.mutt.org/
197 file-transfer utility
198 [13]http://www.ncftp.com/
201 New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7 and
203 [14]https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi
206 Lynx-like info browser.
207 [15]https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/
210 newsreader, supporting color, MIME [16]http://www.tin.org/
212 as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support alone:
216 [17]http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/
220 [18]http://invisible-island.net/vile/
222 The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs
223 (including a few games).
225 Who's Who and What's What
227 Zeyd Ben-Halim started it from a previous package pcurses, written by
228 Pavel Curtis. Eric S. Raymond continued development. Juergen Pfeifer
229 wrote most of the form and menu libraries. Ongoing work is being done
230 by [19]Thomas Dickey. Thomas Dickey acts as the maintainer for the
231 Free Software Foundation, which holds the copyright on ncurses.
232 Contact the current maintainers at [20]bug-ncurses@gnu.org.
234 To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to
235 bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org containing the line:
236 subscribe <name>@<host.domain>
238 This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the development
239 and testing of this package.
241 Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release are made
242 available at [21]ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ .
246 * Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization
248 * Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.
250 We need people to help with these projects. If you are interested in
251 working on them, please join the ncurses list.
253 Other Related Resources
255 The distribution provides a newer version of the terminfo-format
256 terminal description file once maintained by [22]Eric Raymond . Unlike
257 the older version, the termcap and terminfo data are provided in the
258 same file, and provides several user-definable extensions beyond the
259 X/Open specification.
261 You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics not
262 covered in the terminfo file at [23]Richard Shuford's archive .
266 1. ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/
267 2. ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/
268 3. http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/form_fieldtype.3x
269 4. http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-Ada95.html
270 5. http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html
271 6. http://invisible-island.net/cdk/
272 7. http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/
273 8. http://invisible-island.net/ded/
274 9. http://invisible-island.net/dialog/
275 10. http://lynx.isc.org/release/
276 11. http://www.midnight-commander.org/
277 12. http://www.mutt.org/
278 13. http://www.ncftp.com/
279 14. https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi
280 15. https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/
281 16. http://www.tin.org/
282 17. http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/
283 18. http://invisible-island.net/vile/
284 19. mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net
285 20. mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org
286 21. ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/
287 22. http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/
288 23. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal