1<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 3.0//EN"> 2<!-- 3 $Id: announce.html.in,v 1.39 2000/07/04 21:59:36 tom Exp $ 4--> 5<HTML> 6<HEAD> 7<TITLE>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</TITLE> 8<link rev=made href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org"> 9</HEAD> 10<BODY> 11 12<H1>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</H1> 13 14The ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation of 15curses in System V Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo format, 16supports pads and color 17and multiple highlights and forms characters and function-key mapping, 18and has all the other SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD curses.<P> 19 20In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared that he 21considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and is encouraging the keepers of 22Unix releases such as BSD/OS, freeBSD and netBSD to switch over to 23ncurses.<P> 24 25The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It should port easily to 26any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!<P> 27 28The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including a 29terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), clear(1), tput(1), tset(1), 30and a termcap conversion tool captoinfo(1). Full manual pages are provided for 31the library and tools.<P> 32 33The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at 34the GNU distribution site 35<A HREF="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses</A>. 36<br>It is also available at 37<A HREF="ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses">ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses</A>. 38 39<H1>Release Notes</H1> 40 41This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses 5.0; very few 42applications will require recompilation, depending on the platform. 43These are the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.0 release. 44<p> 45Interface changes: 46<ul> 47 <li>made the extended terminal capabilities 48 (<code>configure --enable-tcap-names</code>) 49 a standard feature (though the configure script can disable it, 50 it is built by default). 51 52 <li>removed the <code>trace()</code> function and related trace support 53 from the production library. This is the only interface change that 54 may cause problems with existing applications linked to shared 55 libraries, since not all platforms use the minor version number. 56 57 <li>explicitly initialized to zero several data items which were 58 implicitly initialized, e.g., cur_term. If not explicitly 59 initialized, their storage type is C (common), and causes problems 60 linking on some platforms. 61 62 <li>modified curses.h.in, undef'ing some symbols to avoid conflict with 63 C++ STL. 64</ul> 65New features: 66<ul> 67 <li>added a new extension, <code>assume_default_colors()</code> to 68 provide better control over the use of default colors. This is 69 the principal visible difference between ncurses 5.1 and preceding 70 versions. The new extension allows an application to specify what 71 colors pair 0 uses. 72 <p> 73 <em>NOTE</em>: Pair 0 defaults to white on black unless 74 you have invoked <code>use_default_colors()</code> or set it via 75 <code>assume_default_colors()</code>. An application that calls 76 <code>start_colors()</code> without setting the background color 77 will consistently have a black background no matter what color your 78 terminal's background actually is. 79 80 <li>made several fixes to the terminfo-to-termcap conversion, and 81 have been using the generated termcaps without further hand-tuning. 82 This builds on the extension <code>use_extended_names()</code> by 83 adding "obsolete" termcap strings to terminfo.src 84 <ul> 85 <li>modified <code>tic</code> so that if extended names (i.e., 86 configure --enable-tcap-names) are active, then <code>tic -x</code> 87 will also write "obsolete" capabilities that are present in the 88 terminfo source. 89 90 <li>added screen's AX capability (for ECMA SGR 39 and 49) to applicable 91 terminfo entries, use presence of this as a check for a small 92 improvement in setting default colors. 93 94 <li>add -a option to tic and infocmp, which retains commented-out 95 capabilities during source translation/comparison, e.g., captoinfo 96 and infotocap. 97 </ul> 98 99 <li>implemented limited support for UTF-8, useful with XFree86 xterm: 100 <ul> 101 <li>if the <code>configure --enable-widec</code> option is 102 given, append 'w' to names of the generated libraries (e.g., 103 libncursesw.so) to avoid conflict with existing ncurses libraries. 104 <li>add a simple UTF-8 output driver to the experimental 105 wide-character support. If any of the environment variables 106 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE or LANG contain the string "UTF-8", this driver 107 will be used to translate the output to UTF-8. 108 <li>modified view.c to make a rudimentary viewer of UTF-8 text. 109 </ul> 110 111 <li>modify <code>raw()</code> and <code>noraw()</code> to clear/restore 112 IEXTEN flag which affects <code>stty lnext</code> on systems such as FreeBSD 113 114 <li>reordered tests during mouse initialization to allow for gpm to run 115 in xterm, or for xterm to be used under OS/2 EMX. Also dropped test 116 for <code>$DISPLAY</code> in favor of the terminfo capability 117 <code>kmous=\E[M</code> or 118 if <code>$TERM</code> environment variable contains "xterm". 119 120 <li>added configure option <code>--with-manpage-symlinks</code>, which 121 provides for fully indexing manpage entries by making symbolic links 122 for the aliases. 123 124 <li>changed <code>unctrl()</code> to render C1 characters (128-159) as 125 <code>~@</code>, <code>~A</code>, etc. 126 127 <li>add experimental configure option --enable-colorfgbg to check for 128 $COLORTERM variable as set by rxvt/aterm/Eterm. 129 130 <li>made the <code>infocmp -F</code> option less verbose. 131 132 <li>dropped support for gnat 3.10 (gnat 3.12 is current). 133 134</ul> 135Major bug fixes: 136<ul> 137 <li>modified infocmp -e, -E options to ensure that generated fallback.c 138 type for Booleans agrees with term.h 139 140 <li>documented a special case of incompatiblity between ncurses 4.2 and 141 5.0, added a section for this in INSTALL. 142 143 <li>corrected tests for file-descriptors in OS/2 EMX mouse support. A 144 negative value could be used by FD_SET, causing the select() call to 145 wait indefinitely. 146 147 <li>made 'tput flash' work properly for xterm by flushing output in 148 delay_output() when using napms(), and modifying xterm's terminfo to 149 specify no padding character. Otherwise, xterm's reported baud rate 150 could mislead ncurses into producing too few padding characters. 151 152 <li>modified lib_addch.c to allow repeated update to the lower-right 153 corner, rather than displaying only the first character written until 154 the cursor is moved. Recent versions of SVr4 curses can update the 155 lower-right corner, and behave this way. 156 157 <li>modified echo() behavior of getch() to match Solaris curses for 158 carriage return and backspace (reported by Neil Zanella). 159 160 <li>corrected offsets used for subwindows in <code>wresize()</code> 161 162 <li>modified configure script so AC_MSG_ERROR is temporarily defined to 163 a warning in AC_PROG_CXX to make it recover from a missing C++ 164 compiler without requiring user to add --without-cxx option 165 166 <li>corrected logic in lib_twait.c as used by lib_mouse.c for GPM mouse 167 support when poll() is used rather than select(). 168 169 <li>made several fixes for buffer overflows, unchecked recursion, 170 improvements in performance, etc. See the NEWS file for details. 171</ul> 172 173<H1>Features of Ncurses</H1> 174 175The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4) curses: 176 177<UL> 178<LI>All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are documented). 179<LI>Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard mapping, color, 180forms-drawing with ACS characters, and automatic recognition of keypad 181and function keys. 182<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting 183a stack of windows with backing store, is included. 184<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting 185a uniform but flexible interface for menu programming, is included. 186<LI>An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting 187data collection through on-screen forms, is included. 188<LI>Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1) implementation 189are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format SVr4 curses uses. 190<LI>The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo 191entries for use with less capable <STRONG>curses</STRONG>/<STRONG>terminfo</STRONG> 192versions such as the HP/UX and AIX ports.</UL> 193 194The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over SVr4: 195 196<UL> 197<LI>The API is 8-bit clean and base-level conformant with the X/OPEN curses 198specification, XSI curses (that is, it implements all BASE level features, 199but not all EXTENDED features). Most EXTENDED-level features not directly 200concerned with wide-character support are implemented, including many 201function calls not supported under SVr4 curses (but portability of all 202calls is documented so you can use the SVr4 subset only). 203<LI>Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost corner 204of the screen if your terminal has an insert-character capability. 205<LI>Ada95 and C++ bindings. 206<LI>Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and OS/2 console windows. 207<LI>Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm package. 208<LI>The function <CODE>wresize()</CODE> allows you to resize windows, preserving 209their data. 210<LI>The function <CODE>use_default_colors()</CODE> allows you to 211use the terminal's default colors for the default color pair, 212achieving the effect of transparent colors. 213<LI>The functions <CODE>keyok()</CODE> 214and <CODE>define_key()</CODE> allow 215you to better control the use of function keys, 216e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE, 217or by defining more than one control sequence to map to a given key code. 218<LI>Support for 16-color terminals, such as aixterm and XFree86 xterm. 219<LI>Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now features a 220cursor-local-movement computation more efficient than either BSD's 221or System V's. 222<LI>Super hardware scrolling support. The screen-update code incorporates 223a novel, simple, and cheap algorithm that enables it to make optimal 224use of hardware scrolling, line-insertion, and line-deletion 225for screen-line movements. This algorithm is more powerful than 226the 4.4BSD curses quickch() routine. 227<LI>Real support for terminals with the magic-cookie glitch. The 228screen-update code will refrain from drawing a highlight if the magic- 229cookie unattributed spaces required just before the beginning and 230after the end would step on a non-space character. It will 231automatically shift highlight boundaries when doing so would make it 232possible to draw the highlight without changing the visual appearance 233of the screen. 234<LI>It is possible to generate the library with a list of pre-loaded 235fallback entries linked to it so that it can serve those terminal types even 236when no terminfo tree or termcap file is accessible (this may be useful 237for support of screen-oriented programs that must run in single-user mode). 238<LI>The tic(1)/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the 239ability to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and 240AT&T extension sets. 241<LI>A BSD-like tset(1) utility is provided. 242<LI>The ncurses library and utilities will automatically read terminfo 243entries from $HOME/.terminfo if it exists, and compile to that directory 244if it exists and the user has no write access to the system directory. 245This feature makes it easier for users to have personal terminfo entries 246without giving up access to the system terminfo directory. 247<LI>You may specify a path of directories to search for compiled 248descriptions with the environment variable TERMINFO_DIRS (this 249generalizes the feature provided by TERMINFO under stock System V.) 250<LI>In terminfo source files, use capabilities may refer not just to 251other entries in the same source file (as in System V) but also to 252compiled entries in either the system terminfo directory or the user's 253$HOME/.terminfo directory. 254<LI>A script (<STRONG>capconvert</STRONG>) is provided to help BSD users 255transition from termcap to terminfo. It gathers the information in a 256TERMCAP environment variable and/or a ~/.termcap local entries file 257and converts it to an equivalent local terminfo tree under $HOME/.terminfo. 258<LI>Automatic fallback to the /etc/termcap file can be compiled in 259when it is not possible to build a terminfo tree. This feature is neither 260fast nor cheap, you don't want to use it unless you have to, 261but it's there. 262<LI>The table-of-entries utility <STRONG>toe</STRONG> makes it easy for users to 263see exactly what terminal types are available on the system. 264<LI>The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro entry 265point have a corresponding function which may be linked (and will be 266prototype-checked) if the macro definition is disabled with 267<CODE>#undef</CODE>. 268<LI>An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document provides 269a narrative introduction to the curses programming interface. 270</UL> 271 272<H1>State of the Package</H1> 273 274Numerous bugs present in earlier versions have been fixed; the 275library is far more reliable than it used to be. Bounds checking in many 276`dangerous' entry points has been improved. The code is now type-safe 277according to gcc -Wall. The library has been checked for malloc leaks and 278arena corruption by the Purify memory-allocation tester.<P> 279 280The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of applications 281including (versions starting with those noted): 282<DL> 283<DT> cdk 284<DD> Curses Development Kit 285<br> 286<A HREF="http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html">http://www.vexus.ca/CDK.html</a> 287<br> 288<A HREF="http://dickey.his.com/cdk/cdk.html">http://dickey.his.com/cdk</A>. 289<DT> ded 290<DD> directory-editor 291<br> 292<A HREF="http://dickey.his.com/ded/ded.html">http://dickey.his.com/ded</A>. 293<DT> dialog 294<DD> the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and the basis 295for similar applications on GNU/Linux. 296<br> 297<A HREF="http://dickey.his.com/dialog/dialog.html">http://dickey.his.com/dialog</A>. 298<DT> lynx 299<DD> the character-screen WWW browser 300<br> 301<A HREF="http://lynx.isc.org/release/">http://lynx.isc.org/release</A>. 302<DT> Midnight Commander 4.1 303<DD> file manager 304<br> 305<A HREF="www.gnome.org/mc/">www.gnome.org/mc/</A>. 306<DT> mutt 307<DD> mail utility 308<br> 309<A HREF="http://www.mutt.org">http://www.mutt.org</A>. 310<DT> ncftp 311<DD> file-transfer utility 312<br> 313<A HREF="http://www.ncftp.com">http://www.ncftp.com</A>. 314<DT> nvi 315<DD> New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7 and later. 316<br> 317<A HREF="http://www.bostic.com/vi/">http://www.bostic.com/vi/</A>. 318<DT> tin 319<DD> newsreader, supporting color, MIME 320<br> 321<A HREF="http://www.tin.org">http://www.tin.org</A>. 322<DT> taper 323<DD> tape archive utility 324<br> 325<A HREF="http://members.iinet.net.au/~yusuf/taper/">http://members.iinet.net.au/~yusuf/taper/</A>. 326<DT> vh-1.6 327<DD> Volks-Hypertext browser for the Jargon File 328<br> 329<A HREF="http://www.bg.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html">http://www.bg.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/vh.html</A>. 330</DL> 331as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support alone: 332<DL> 333<DT> minicom 334<DD> terminal emulator 335<br> 336<A HREF="http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~walker/minicom.html">http://www.pp.clinet.fi/~walker/minicom.html</A>. 337<DT> vile 338<DD> vi-like-emacs 339<br> 340<A HREF="http://dickey.his.com/vile/vile.html">http://dickey.his.com/vile</A>. 341</DL> 342<P> 343 344The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs (including 345a few games). 346 347<H2>Who's Who and What's What</H2> 348 349The original developers of ncurses are <A 350HREF="mailto:zmbenhal@netcom.com">Zeyd Ben-Halim</A> and 351<A HREF="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html">Eric S. Raymond</A>. 352Ongoing work is being done by 353<A HREF="mailto:dickey@herndon4.his.com">Thomas Dickey</A> 354and 355<A HREF="mailto:juergen.pfeifer@gmx.net">Jürgen Pfeifer</A>. 356<A HREF="mailto:dickey@herndon4.his.com">Thomas Dickey</A> 357acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation, which holds the 358copyright on ncurses. 359Contact the current maintainers at 360<A HREF="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">bug-ncurses@gnu.org</A>. 361<P> 362 363To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to 364<CODE>bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org</CODE> containing the line: 365<PRE> 366 subscribe <name>@<host.domain> 367</PRE> 368 369This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the development and 370testing of this package.<P> 371 372Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release are made available at 373<A HREF="ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses">ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses</A>. 374 375<H2>Future Plans</H2> 376<UL> 377<LI>Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization support. 378<LI>Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows. 379</UL> 380We need people to help with these projects. If you are interested in working 381on them, please join the ncurses list. 382 383<H2>Other Related Resources</H2> 384 385The distribution includes and uses a version of the terminfo-format 386terminal description file maintained by Eric Raymond. 387<A HREF="http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo">http://earthspace.net/~esr/terminfo</A>.<P> 388 389You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics 390not covered in the terminfo file at 391<A HREF="http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal_index.html">Richard Shuford's 392archive</A>. 393</BODY> 394</HTML> 395<!-- 396# The following sets edit modes for GNU EMACS 397# Local Variables: 398# mode:html 399# case-fold-search:nil 400# fill-column:70 401# End: 402--> 403