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38 <title>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</title>
39 <link rev="made" href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">
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45 <h1>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</h1>The ncurses (new curses)
46 library is a free software emulation of curses in System V
47 Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo format, supports pads and
48 color and multiple highlights and forms characters and
49 function-key mapping, and has all the other SYSV-curses
50 enhancements over BSD curses.
52 <p>In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared
53 that he considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the
54 keepers of Unix releases such as BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to
55 switch over to ncurses.</p>
57 <p>The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It has been in
58 use for some time with OpenBSD as the system curses library, and
59 on FreeBSD and NetBSD as an external package. It should port
60 easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported
63 <p>The distribution includes the library and support utilities,
64 including a terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1),
65 clear(1), tput(1), tset(1), and a termcap conversion tool
66 captoinfo(1). Full manual pages are provided for the library and
69 <p>The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at the
70 GNU distribution site <a href=
71 "ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/</a> .<br>
73 It is also available at <a href=
74 "ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a> .</p>
76 <h1>Release Notes</h1>This release is designed to be upward
77 compatible from ncurses 5.0 through 5.8; very few applications
78 will require recompilation, depending on the platform. These are
79 the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.8 release.
81 <p>This is a bug-fix release, correcting a small number of urgent
82 problems in the ncurses library from the 5.8 release.</p>
84 <p>It also improves the Ada95 binding:</p>
87 <li>fixes a longstanding portability problem with its use of
89 "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/form_fieldtype.3x">set_field_type</a>
90 function. Because that function uses variable-length argument
91 lists, its interface with gnat does not work with certain
94 <li>improves configurability and portability, particularly when
95 built separately from the main ncurses tree. The 5.8 release
96 introduced scripts which can be used to construct separate
97 tarballs for the Ada95 and ncurses examples.
99 <p>Those were a proof of concept. For the 5.9 release, those
100 scripts are augmented with rpm- and dpkg-scripts used in test
101 builds against a variety of gnat- and system ncurses versions
102 as old as gnat 3.15 and ncurses 5.4 (see snapshots and
103 systems tested <a href=
104 "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-Ada95.html">here</a>.</p>
107 <li>additional improvements were made for portability of the
108 ncurses examples, adding rpm- and dpkg-scripts for test-builds.
110 "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html">this
111 page</a> for snapshots and other information.</li>
114 <h1>Features of Ncurses</h1>The ncurses package is fully
115 compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4) curses:
118 <li>All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are
121 <li>Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard
122 mapping, color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and
123 automatic recognition of keypad and function keys.</li>
125 <li>An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting a stack
126 of windows with backing store, is included.</li>
128 <li>An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting a
129 uniform but flexible interface for menu programming, is
132 <li>An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting data
133 collection through on-screen forms, is included.</li>
135 <li>Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1)
136 implementation are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format
137 SVr4 curses uses.</li>
139 <li>The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo
140 entries for use with less capable
141 <strong>curses</strong>/<strong>terminfo</strong> versions such
142 as the HP/UX and AIX ports.</li>
143 </ul>The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over
147 <li>The API is 8-bit clean and base-level conformant with the
148 X/OPEN curses specification, XSI curses (that is, it implements
149 all BASE level features, and most EXTENDED features). It
150 includes many function calls not supported under SVr4 curses
151 (but portability of all calls is documented so you can use the
152 SVr4 subset only).</li>
154 <li>Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the
155 rightmost-bottommost corner of the screen if your terminal has
156 an insert-character capability.</li>
158 <li>Ada95 and C++ bindings.</li>
160 <li>Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and
161 FreeBSD and OS/2 console windows.</li>
163 <li>Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm
166 <li>The function <code>wresize</code> allows you to resize
167 windows, preserving their data.</li>
169 <li>The function <code>use_default_colors</code> allows you to
170 use the terminal's default colors for the default color pair,
171 achieving the effect of transparent colors.</li>
173 <li>The functions <code>keyok</code> and
174 <code>define_key</code> allow you to better control the use of
175 function keys, e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE, or by
176 defining more than one control sequence to map to a given key
179 <li>Support for 256-color terminals, such as modern xterm, when
180 configured using the <code>--enable-ext-colors</code>
183 <li>Support for 16-color terminals, such as <em>aixterm</em>
184 and <em>modern xterm</em>.</li>
186 <li>Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now
187 features a cursor-local-movement computation more efficient
188 than either BSD's or System V's.</li>
190 <li>Super hardware scrolling support. The screen-update code
191 incorporates a novel, simple, and cheap algorithm that enables
192 it to make optimal use of hardware scrolling, line-insertion,
193 and line-deletion for screen-line movements. This algorithm is
194 more powerful than the 4.4BSD curses <code>quickch</code>
197 <li>Real support for terminals with the magic-cookie glitch.
198 The screen-update code will refrain from drawing a highlight if
199 the magic- cookie unattributed spaces required just before the
200 beginning and after the end would step on a non-space
201 character. It will automatically shift highlight boundaries
202 when doing so would make it possible to draw the highlight
203 without changing the visual appearance of the screen.</li>
205 <li>It is possible to generate the library with a list of
206 pre-loaded fallback entries linked to it so that it can serve
207 those terminal types even when no terminfo tree or termcap file
208 is accessible (this may be useful for support of
209 screen-oriented programs that must run in single-user
212 <li>The tic(1)/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the
213 ability to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and
214 AT&T extension sets.</li>
216 <li>A BSD-like tset(1) utility is provided.</li>
218 <li>The ncurses library and utilities will automatically read
219 terminfo entries from $HOME/.terminfo if it exists, and compile
220 to that directory if it exists and the user has no write access
221 to the system directory. This feature makes it easier for users
222 to have personal terminfo entries without giving up access to
223 the system terminfo directory.</li>
225 <li>You may specify a path of directories to search for
226 compiled descriptions with the environment variable
227 TERMINFO_DIRS (this generalizes the feature provided by
228 TERMINFO under stock System V.)</li>
230 <li>In terminfo source files, use capabilities may refer not
231 just to other entries in the same source file (as in System V)
232 but also to compiled entries in either the system terminfo
233 directory or the user's $HOME/.terminfo directory.</li>
235 <li>A script (<strong>capconvert</strong>) is provided to help
236 BSD users transition from termcap to terminfo. It gathers the
237 information in a TERMCAP environment variable and/or a
238 ~/.termcap local entries file and converts it to an equivalent
239 local terminfo tree under $HOME/.terminfo.</li>
241 <li>Automatic fallback to the /etc/termcap file can be compiled
242 in when it is not possible to build a terminfo tree. This
243 feature is neither fast nor cheap, you don't want to use it
244 unless you have to, but it's there.</li>
246 <li>The table-of-entries utility <strong>toe</strong> makes it
247 easy for users to see exactly what terminal types are available
250 <li>The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro
251 entry point have a corresponding function which may be linked
252 (and will be prototype-checked) if the macro definition is
253 disabled with <code>#undef</code>.</li>
255 <li>An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document
256 provides a narrative introduction to the curses programming
260 <h1>State of the Package</h1>Numerous bugs present in earlier
261 versions have been fixed; the library is far more reliable than
262 it used to be. Bounds checking in many `dangerous' entry points
263 has been improved. The code is now type-safe according to gcc
264 -Wall. The library has been checked for malloc leaks and arena
265 corruption by the Purify memory-allocation tester.
267 <p>The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of
268 applications including (versions starting with those noted):</p>
273 <dd>Curses Development Kit<br>
275 "http://invisible-island.net/cdk/">http://invisible-island.net/cdk/</a><br>
278 "http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/">http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/</a></dd>
282 <dd>directory-editor<br>
284 "http://invisible-island.net/ded/">http://invisible-island.net/ded/</a></dd>
288 <dd>the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and
289 the basis for similar applications on GNU/Linux.<br>
291 "http://invisible-island.net/dialog/">http://invisible-island.net/dialog/</a></dd>
295 <dd>the character-screen WWW browser<br>
297 "http://lynx.isc.org/release/">http://lynx.isc.org/release/</a></dd>
299 <dt>Midnight Commander</dt>
303 "http://www.midnight-commander.org/">http://www.midnight-commander.org/</a></dd>
308 <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">http://www.mutt.org/</a></dd>
312 <dd>file-transfer utility<br>
313 <a href="http://www.ncftp.com/">http://www.ncftp.com/</a></dd>
317 <dd>New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7
320 "https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi">https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi</a><br>
325 <dd>Lynx-like info browser. <a href=
326 "https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/</a></dd>
330 <dd>newsreader, supporting color, MIME <a href=
331 "http://www.tin.org/">http://www.tin.org/</a></dd>
332 </dl>as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support
338 <dd>terminal emulator<br>
340 "http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/">http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/</a></dd>
344 <dd>vi-like-emacs<br>
346 "http://invisible-island.net/vile/">http://invisible-island.net/vile/</a></dd>
349 <p>The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs
350 (including a few games).</p>
352 <h2>Who's Who and What's What</h2>Zeyd Ben-Halim started it from
353 a previous package pcurses, written by Pavel Curtis. Eric S.
354 Raymond continued development. Jürgen Pfeifer wrote most of
355 the form and menu libraries. Ongoing work is being done by
356 <a href="mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net">Thomas Dickey</a>.
357 Thomas Dickey acts as the maintainer for the Free Software
358 Foundation, which holds the copyright on ncurses. Contact the
359 current maintainers at <a href=
360 "mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">bug-ncurses@gnu.org</a>.
362 <p>To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to
363 <code>bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org</code> containing the line:</p>
365 subscribe <name>@<host.domain>
368 <p>This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the
369 development and testing of this package.</p>
371 <p>Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release
372 are made available at <a href=
373 "ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a> .</p>
375 <p>There is an archive of the mailing list here:</p>
378 "http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses">http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses</a>
380 "https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses">https</a>)</p>
382 <h2>Future Plans</h2>
385 <li>Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization
388 <li>Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.</li>
389 </ul>We need people to help with these projects. If you are
390 interested in working on them, please join the ncurses list.
392 <h2>Other Related Resources</h2>The distribution provides a newer
393 version of the terminfo-format terminal description file once
394 maintained by <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/">Eric
395 Raymond</a> . Unlike the older version, the termcap and
396 terminfo data are provided in the same file, and provides several
397 user-definable extensions beyond the X/Open specification.
399 <p>You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics
400 not covered in the terminfo file at <a href=
401 "http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal">
402 Richard Shuford's archive</a> .</p>