1<!-- 2 $Id: announce.html.in,v 1.89 2013/05/18 10:12:25 tom Exp $ 3 **************************************************************************** 4 * Copyright (c) 1998-2011,2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc. * 5 * * 6 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a * 7 * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the * 8 * "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including * 9 * without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, * 10 * distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell * 11 * copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is * 12 * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: * 13 * * 14 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included * 15 * in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. * 16 * * 17 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS * 18 * OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF * 19 * MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. * 20 * IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, * 21 * DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR * 22 * OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR * 23 * THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. * 24 * * 25 * Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright * 26 * holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the * 27 * sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written * 28 * authorization. * 29 **************************************************************************** 30--> 31<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> 32 33<html> 34<head> 35 <meta name="generator" content= 36 "HTML Tidy for Linux (vers 25 March 2009), see www.w3.org"> 37 38 <title>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</title> 39 <link rev="made" href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org"> 40 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= 41 "text/html; charset=us-ascii"> 42</head> 43 44<body> 45 <h1>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</h1> 46 47 <p>The ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation 48 of curses in System V Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo 49 format, supports pads and color and multiple highlights and forms 50 characters and function-key mapping, and has all the other 51 SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD curses.</p> 52 53 <p>In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared 54 that he considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the 55 keepers of Unix releases such as BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to 56 switch over to ncurses.</p> 57 58 <p>The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It has been in 59 use for some time with OpenBSD as the system curses library, and 60 on FreeBSD and NetBSD as an external package. It should port 61 easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported 62 to OS/2 Warp!</p> 63 64 <p>The distribution includes the library and support utilities, 65 including a terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), 66 clear(1), tput(1), tset(1), and a termcap conversion tool 67 captoinfo(1). Full manual pages are provided for the library and 68 tools.</p> 69 70 <p>The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at the 71 GNU distribution site <a href= 72 "ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/</a> .<br> 73 74 It is also available at <a href= 75 "ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a> .</p> 76 77 <h1>Release Notes</h1> 78 79 <p>This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 80 5.0 through 5.8; very few applications will require 81 recompilation, depending on the platform. These are the 82 highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.8 release.</p> 83 84 <p>This is a bug-fix release, correcting a small number of urgent 85 problems in the ncurses library from the 5.8 release.</p> 86 87 <p>It also improves the Ada95 binding:</p> 88 89 <ul> 90 <li>fixes a longstanding portability problem with its use of 91 the <a href= 92 "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/form_fieldtype.3x">set_field_type</a> 93 function. Because that function uses variable-length argument 94 lists, its interface with gnat does not work with certain 95 platforms.</li> 96 97 <li>improves configurability and portability, particularly when 98 built separately from the main ncurses tree. The 5.8 release 99 introduced scripts which can be used to construct separate 100 tarballs for the Ada95 and ncurses examples. 101 102 <p>Those were a proof of concept. For the 5.9 release, those 103 scripts are augmented with rpm- and dpkg-scripts used in test 104 builds against a variety of gnat- and system ncurses versions 105 as old as gnat 3.15 and ncurses 5.4 (see snapshots and 106 systems tested <a href= 107 "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-Ada95.html">here</a>.</p> 108 </li> 109 110 <li>additional improvements were made for portability of the 111 ncurses examples, adding rpm- and dpkg-scripts for test-builds. 112 See <a href= 113 "http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html">this 114 page</a> for snapshots and other information.</li> 115 </ul> 116 117 <h1>Features of Ncurses</h1> 118 119 <p>The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 (System V 120 Release 4) curses:</p> 121 122 <ul> 123 <li>All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are 124 documented).</li> 125 126 <li>Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard 127 mapping, color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and 128 automatic recognition of keypad and function keys.</li> 129 130 <li>An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting a stack 131 of windows with backing store, is included.</li> 132 133 <li>An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting a 134 uniform but flexible interface for menu programming, is 135 included.</li> 136 137 <li>An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting data 138 collection through on-screen forms, is included.</li> 139 140 <li>Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1) 141 implementation are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format 142 SVr4 curses uses.</li> 143 144 <li>The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo 145 entries for use with less capable 146 <strong>curses</strong>/<strong>terminfo</strong> versions such 147 as the HP/UX and AIX ports.</li> 148 </ul> 149 150 <p>The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over 151 SVr4:</p> 152 153 <ul> 154 <li>The API is 8-bit clean and base-level conformant with the 155 X/OPEN curses specification, XSI curses (that is, it implements 156 all BASE level features, and most EXTENDED features). It 157 includes many function calls not supported under SVr4 curses 158 (but portability of all calls is documented so you can use the 159 SVr4 subset only).</li> 160 161 <li>Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the 162 rightmost-bottommost corner of the screen if your terminal has 163 an insert-character capability.</li> 164 165 <li>Ada95 and C++ bindings.</li> 166 167 <li>Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and 168 FreeBSD and OS/2 console windows.</li> 169 170 <li>Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm 171 package.</li> 172 173 <li>The function <code>wresize</code> allows you to resize 174 windows, preserving their data.</li> 175 176 <li>The function <code>use_default_colors</code> allows you to 177 use the terminal's default colors for the default color pair, 178 achieving the effect of transparent colors.</li> 179 180 <li>The functions <code>keyok</code> and 181 <code>define_key</code> allow you to better control the use of 182 function keys, e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE, or by 183 defining more than one control sequence to map to a given key 184 code.</li> 185 186 <li>Support for 256-color terminals, such as modern xterm, when 187 configured using the <code>--enable-ext-colors</code> 188 option.</li> 189 190 <li>Support for 16-color terminals, such as <em>aixterm</em> 191 and <em>modern xterm</em>.</li> 192 193 <li>Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now 194 features a cursor-local-movement computation more efficient 195 than either BSD's or System V's.</li> 196 197 <li>Super hardware scrolling support. The screen-update code 198 incorporates a novel, simple, and cheap algorithm that enables 199 it to make optimal use of hardware scrolling, line-insertion, 200 and line-deletion for screen-line movements. This algorithm is 201 more powerful than the 4.4BSD curses <code>quickch</code> 202 routine.</li> 203 204 <li>Real support for terminals with the magic-cookie glitch. 205 The screen-update code will refrain from drawing a highlight if 206 the magic- cookie unattributed spaces required just before the 207 beginning and after the end would step on a non-space 208 character. It will automatically shift highlight boundaries 209 when doing so would make it possible to draw the highlight 210 without changing the visual appearance of the screen.</li> 211 212 <li>It is possible to generate the library with a list of 213 pre-loaded fallback entries linked to it so that it can serve 214 those terminal types even when no terminfo tree or termcap file 215 is accessible (this may be useful for support of 216 screen-oriented programs that must run in single-user 217 mode).</li> 218 219 <li>The tic(1)/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the 220 ability to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and 221 AT&T extension sets.</li> 222 223 <li>A BSD-like tset(1) utility is provided.</li> 224 225 <li>The ncurses library and utilities will automatically read 226 terminfo entries from $HOME/.terminfo if it exists, and compile 227 to that directory if it exists and the user has no write access 228 to the system directory. This feature makes it easier for users 229 to have personal terminfo entries without giving up access to 230 the system terminfo directory.</li> 231 232 <li>You may specify a path of directories to search for 233 compiled descriptions with the environment variable 234 TERMINFO_DIRS (this generalizes the feature provided by 235 TERMINFO under stock System V.)</li> 236 237 <li>In terminfo source files, use capabilities may refer not 238 just to other entries in the same source file (as in System V) 239 but also to compiled entries in either the system terminfo 240 directory or the user's $HOME/.terminfo directory.</li> 241 242 <li>A script (<strong>capconvert</strong>) is provided to help 243 BSD users transition from termcap to terminfo. It gathers the 244 information in a TERMCAP environment variable and/or a 245 ~/.termcap local entries file and converts it to an equivalent 246 local terminfo tree under $HOME/.terminfo.</li> 247 248 <li>Automatic fallback to the /etc/termcap file can be compiled 249 in when it is not possible to build a terminfo tree. This 250 feature is neither fast nor cheap, you don't want to use it 251 unless you have to, but it's there.</li> 252 253 <li>The table-of-entries utility <strong>toe</strong> makes it 254 easy for users to see exactly what terminal types are available 255 on the system.</li> 256 257 <li>The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro 258 entry point have a corresponding function which may be linked 259 (and will be prototype-checked) if the macro definition is 260 disabled with <code>#undef</code>.</li> 261 262 <li>An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document 263 provides a narrative introduction to the curses programming 264 interface.</li> 265 </ul> 266 267 <h1>State of the Package</h1> 268 269 <p>Numerous bugs present in earlier versions have been fixed; the 270 library is far more reliable than it used to be. Bounds checking 271 in many `dangerous' entry points has been improved. The code is 272 now type-safe according to gcc -Wall. The library has been 273 checked for malloc leaks and arena corruption by the Purify 274 memory-allocation tester.</p> 275 276 <p>The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of 277 applications including (versions starting with those noted):</p> 278 279 <dl> 280 <dt>cdk</dt> 281 282 <dd>Curses Development Kit<br> 283 <a href= 284 "http://invisible-island.net/cdk/">http://invisible-island.net/cdk/</a><br> 285 286 <a href= 287 "http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/">http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/</a></dd> 288 289 <dt>ded</dt> 290 291 <dd>directory-editor<br> 292 <a href= 293 "http://invisible-island.net/ded/">http://invisible-island.net/ded/</a></dd> 294 295 <dt>dialog</dt> 296 297 <dd>the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and 298 the basis for similar applications on GNU/Linux.<br> 299 <a href= 300 "http://invisible-island.net/dialog/">http://invisible-island.net/dialog/</a></dd> 301 302 <dt>lynx</dt> 303 304 <dd>the character-screen WWW browser<br> 305 <a href= 306 "http://lynx.isc.org/release/">http://lynx.isc.org/release/</a></dd> 307 308 <dt>Midnight Commander</dt> 309 310 <dd>file manager<br> 311 <a href= 312 "http://www.midnight-commander.org/">http://www.midnight-commander.org/</a></dd> 313 314 <dt>mutt</dt> 315 316 <dd>mail utility<br> 317 <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">http://www.mutt.org/</a></dd> 318 319 <dt>ncftp</dt> 320 321 <dd>file-transfer utility<br> 322 <a href="http://www.ncftp.com/">http://www.ncftp.com/</a></dd> 323 324 <dt>nvi</dt> 325 326 <dd>New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7 327 and later.<br> 328 <a href= 329 "https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi">https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi</a><br> 330 </dd> 331 332 <dt>pinfo</dt> 333 334 <dd>Lynx-like info browser. <a href= 335 "https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/</a></dd> 336 337 <dt>tin</dt> 338 339 <dd>newsreader, supporting color, MIME <a href= 340 "http://www.tin.org/">http://www.tin.org/</a></dd> 341 </dl> 342 343 <p>as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support 344 alone:</p> 345 346 <dl> 347 <dt>minicom</dt> 348 349 <dd>terminal emulator<br> 350 <a href= 351 "http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/">http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/</a></dd> 352 353 <dt>vile</dt> 354 355 <dd>vi-like-emacs<br> 356 <a href= 357 "http://invisible-island.net/vile/">http://invisible-island.net/vile/</a></dd> 358 </dl> 359 360 <p>The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs 361 (including a few games).</p> 362 363 <h2>Who's Who and What's What</h2> 364 365 <p>Zeyd Ben-Halim started it from a previous package pcurses, 366 written by Pavel Curtis. Eric S. Raymond continued development. 367 Jürgen Pfeifer wrote most of the form and menu libraries. 368 Ongoing work is being done by <a href= 369 "mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net">Thomas Dickey</a>. Thomas 370 Dickey acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation, 371 which holds the copyright on ncurses. Contact the current 372 maintainers at <a href= 373 "mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">bug-ncurses@gnu.org</a>.</p> 374 375 <p>To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to 376 <code>bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org</code> containing the line:</p> 377 <pre> 378 subscribe <name>@<host.domain> 379</pre> 380 381 <p>This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the 382 development and testing of this package.</p> 383 384 <p>Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release 385 are made available at <a href= 386 "ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a> .</p> 387 388 <p>There is an archive of the mailing list here:</p> 389 390 <p><a href= 391 "http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses">http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses</a> 392 (also <a href= 393 "https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses">https</a>)</p> 394 395 <h2>Future Plans</h2> 396 397 <ul> 398 <li>Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization 399 support.</li> 400 401 <li>Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.</li> 402 </ul> 403 404 <p>We need people to help with these projects. If you are 405 interested in working on them, please join the ncurses list.</p> 406 407 <h2>Other Related Resources</h2> 408 409 <p>The distribution provides a newer version of the 410 terminfo-format terminal description file once maintained by 411 <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/">Eric 412 Raymond</a> . Unlike the older version, the termcap and 413 terminfo data are provided in the same file, and provides several 414 user-definable extensions beyond the X/Open specification.</p> 415 416 <p>You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics 417 not covered in the terminfo file at <a href= 418 "http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal"> 419 Richard Shuford's archive</a> .</p> 420</body> 421</html> 422