xref: /freebsd/contrib/ncurses/doc/hackguide.doc (revision f4b37ed0f8b307b1f3f0f630ca725d68f1dff30d)
1                          A Hacker's Guide to NCURSES
2
3                                   Contents
4
5     * Abstract
6     * Objective of the Package
7          + Why System V Curses?
8          + How to Design Extensions
9     * Portability and Configuration
10     * Documentation Conventions
11     * How to Report Bugs
12     * A Tour of the Ncurses Library
13          + Library Overview
14          + The Engine Room
15          + Keyboard Input
16          + Mouse Events
17          + Output and Screen Updating
18     * The Forms and Menu Libraries
19     * A Tour of the Terminfo Compiler
20          + Translation of Non-use Capabilities
21          + Use Capability Resolution
22          + Source-Form Translation
23     * Other Utilities
24     * Style Tips for Developers
25     * Porting Hints
26
27                                   Abstract
28
29   This document is a hacker's tour of the ncurses library and utilities.
30   It  discusses  design  philosophy,  implementation  methods,  and  the
31   conventions  used  for  coding  and  documentation.  It is recommended
32   reading  for  anyone  who  is  interested  in  porting,  extending  or
33   improving the package.
34
35                           Objective of the Package
36
37   The objective of the ncurses package is to provide a free software API
38   for character-cell terminals and terminal emulators with the following
39   characteristics:
40     * Source-compatible    with    historical   curses   implementations
41       (including the original BSD curses and System V curses.
42     * Conformant  with the XSI Curses standard issued as part of XPG4 by
43       X/Open.
44     * High-quality  --  stable and reliable code, wide portability, good
45       packaging, superior documentation.
46     * Featureful  --  should  eliminate  as  much  of  the drudgery of C
47       interface programming as possible, freeing programmers to think at
48       a higher level of design.
49
50   These  objectives  are  in  priority  order.  So,  for example, source
51   compatibility  with  older  version  must  trump  featurefulness -- we
52   cannot  add  features  if  it  means  breaking  the portion of the API
53   corresponding to historical curses versions.
54
55Why System V Curses?
56
57   We  used System V curses as a model, reverse-engineering their API, in
58   order to fulfill the first two objectives.
59
60   System  V  curses implementations can support BSD curses programs with
61   just a recompilation, so by capturing the System V API we also capture
62   BSD's.
63
64   More  importantly  for  the  future, the XSI Curses standard issued by
65   X/Open  is  explicitly and closely modeled on System V. So conformance
66   with System V took us most of the way to base-level XSI conformance.
67
68How to Design Extensions
69
70   The  third  objective (standards conformance) requires that it be easy
71   to  condition  source  code  using  ncurses  so  that  the  absence of
72   nonstandard extensions does not break the code.
73
74   Accordingly,  we  have  a  policy of associating with each nonstandard
75   extension  a  feature  macro, so that ncurses client code can use this
76   macro  to  condition  in  or  out  the  code that requires the ncurses
77   extension.
78
79   For  example,  there is a macro NCURSES_MOUSE_VERSION which XSI Curses
80   does  not  define, but which is defined in the ncurses library header.
81   You can use this to condition the calls to the mouse API calls.
82
83                         Portability and Configuration
84
85   Code  written  for  ncurses may assume an ANSI-standard C compiler and
86   POSIX-compatible  OS  interface.  It may also assume the presence of a
87   System-V-compatible select(2) call.
88
89   We encourage (but do not require) developers to make the code friendly
90   to less-capable UNIX environments wherever possible.
91
92   We  encourage  developers  to  support  OS-specific  optimizations and
93   methods not available under POSIX/ANSI, provided only that:
94     * All  such  code  is properly conditioned so the build process does
95       not attempt to compile it under a plain ANSI/POSIX environment.
96     * Adding    such   implementation   methods   does   not   introduce
97       incompatibilities in the ncurses API between platforms.
98
99   We  use GNU autoconf(1) as a tool to deal with portability issues. The
100   right way to leverage an OS-specific feature is to modify the autoconf
101   specification  files  (configure.in  and  aclocal.m4)  to set up a new
102   feature macro, which you then use to condition your code.
103
104                           Documentation Conventions
105
106   There  are  three kinds of documentation associated with this package.
107   Each has a different preferred format:
108     * Package-internal files (README, INSTALL, TO-DO etc.)
109     * Manual pages.
110     * Everything else (i.e., narrative documentation).
111
112   Our conventions are simple:
113    1. Maintain package-internal files in plain text. The expected viewer
114       for  them  more(1)  or  an  editor  window;  there's  no  point in
115       elaborate mark-up.
116    2. Mark  up manual pages in the man macros. These have to be viewable
117       through traditional man(1) programs.
118    3. Write everything else in HTML.
119
120   When  in  doubt,  HTMLize  a  master and use lynx(1) to generate plain
121   ASCII (as we do for the announcement document).
122
123   The reason for choosing HTML is that it's (a) well-adapted for on-line
124   browsing through viewers that are everywhere; (b) more easily readable
125   as  plain  text  than most other mark-ups, if you don't have a viewer;
126   and   (c)   carries   enough  information  that  you  can  generate  a
127   nice-looking  printed  version  from  it.  Also,  of  course,  it make
128   exporting things like the announcement document to WWW pretty trivial.
129
130                              How to Report Bugs
131
132   The  reporting  address  for  bugs  is  bug-ncurses@gnu.org. This is a
133   majordomo  list;  to join, write to bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org with a
134   message containing the line:
135             subscribe <name>@<host.domain>
136
137   The  ncurses  code is maintained by a small group of volunteers. While
138   we  try  our  best to fix bugs promptly, we simply don't have a lot of
139   hours  to  spend  on  elementary  hand-holding. We rely on intelligent
140   cooperation  from  our  users.  If  you  think you have found a bug in
141   ncurses,  there  are some steps you can take before contacting us that
142   will help get the bug fixed quickly.
143
144   In  order  to  use  our bug-fixing time efficiently, we put people who
145   show us they've taken these steps at the head of our queue. This means
146   that  if you don't, you'll probably end up at the tail end and have to
147   wait a while.
148    1. Develop a recipe to reproduce the bug.
149       Bugs  we  can reproduce are likely to be fixed very quickly, often
150       within  days.  The most effective single thing you can do to get a
151       quick  fix  is  develop a way we can duplicate the bad behavior --
152       ideally,  by  giving  us source for a small, portable test program
153       that  breaks the library. (Even better is a keystroke recipe using
154       one of the test programs provided with the distribution.)
155    2. Try to reproduce the bug on a different terminal type.
156       In  our experience, most of the behaviors people report as library
157       bugs are actually due to subtle problems in terminal descriptions.
158       This is especially likely to be true if you're using a traditional
159       asynchronous  terminal  or PC-based terminal emulator, rather than
160       xterm or a UNIX console entry.
161       It's therefore extremely helpful if you can tell us whether or not
162       your  problem  reproduces  on other terminal types. Usually you'll
163       have  both  a  console  type  and  xterm available; please tell us
164       whether or not your bug reproduces on both.
165       If  you  have  xterm  available,  it is also good to collect xterm
166       reports for different window sizes. This is especially true if you
167       normally  use  an unusual xterm window size -- a surprising number
168       of the bugs we've seen are either triggered or masked by these.
169    3. Generate and examine a trace file for the broken behavior.
170       Recompile   your  program  with  the  debugging  versions  of  the
171       libraries.  Insert  a  trace()  call  with  the  argument  set  to
172       TRACE_UPDATE.  (See "Writing Programs with NCURSES" for details on
173       trace  levels.) Reproduce your bug, then look at the trace file to
174       see what the library was actually doing.
175       Another  frequent  cause  of  apparent  bugs is application coding
176       errors  that  cause  the  wrong  things  to  be put on the virtual
177       screen. Looking at the virtual-screen dumps in the trace file will
178       tell  you  immediately if this is happening, and save you from the
179       possible  embarrassment of being told that the bug is in your code
180       and is your problem rather than ours.
181       If  the  virtual-screen  dumps  look correct but the bug persists,
182       it's  possible  to  crank up the trace level to give more and more
183       information  about  the  library's  update actions and the control
184       sequences  it  issues  to  perform them. The test directory of the
185       distribution contains a tool for digesting these logs to make them
186       less tedious to wade through.
187       Often you'll find terminfo problems at this stage by noticing that
188       the  escape  sequences put out for various capabilities are wrong.
189       If  not,  you're likely to learn enough to be able to characterize
190       any bug in the screen-update logic quite exactly.
191    4. Report details and symptoms, not just interpretations.
192       If  you  do the preceding two steps, it is very likely that you'll
193       discover the nature of the problem yourself and be able to send us
194       a  fix.  This  will  create happy feelings all around and earn you
195       good  karma for the first time you run into a bug you really can't
196       characterize and fix yourself.
197       If  you're  still  stuck,  at  least  you'll know what to tell us.
198       Remember,  we  need  details.  If  you guess about what is safe to
199       leave out, you are too likely to be wrong.
200       If  your  bug  produces a bad update, include a trace file. Try to
201       make  the  trace  at the least voluminous level that pins down the
202       bug.  Logs  that  have  been through tracemunch are OK, it doesn't
203       throw   away   any   information  (actually  they're  better  than
204       un-munched ones because they're easier to read).
205       If  your bug produces a core-dump, please include a symbolic stack
206       trace generated by gdb(1) or your local equivalent.
207       Tell us about every terminal on which you've reproduced the bug --
208       and  every  terminal on which you can't. Ideally, sent us terminfo
209       sources for all of these (yours might differ from ours).
210       Include  your ncurses version and your OS/machine type, of course!
211       You can find your ncurses version in the curses.h file.
212
213   If  your  problem  smells  like a logic error or in cursor movement or
214   scrolling  or a bad capability, there are a couple of tiny test frames
215   for  the  library  algorithms in the progs directory that may help you
216   isolate  it. These are not part of the normal build, but do have their
217   own make productions.
218
219   The   most  important  of  these  is  mvcur,  a  test  frame  for  the
220   cursor-movement  optimization  code.  With  this  program, you can see
221   directly  what  control sequences will be emitted for any given cursor
222   movement or scroll/insert/delete operations. If you think you've got a
223   bad  capability  identified,  you  can  disable it and test again. The
224   program is command-driven and has on-line help.
225
226   If  you think the vertical-scroll optimization is broken, or just want
227   to  understand  how it works better, build hashmap and read the header
228   comments  of hardscroll.c and hashmap.c; then try it out. You can also
229   test the hardware-scrolling optimization separately with hardscroll.
230
231                         A Tour of the Ncurses Library
232
233Library Overview
234
235   Most  of  the  library is superstructure -- fairly trivial convenience
236   interfaces  to a small set of basic functions and data structures used
237   to  manipulate  the  virtual  screen (in particular, none of this code
238   does  any  I/O  except  through  calls  to  more  fundamental  modules
239   described below). The files
240
241     lib_addch.c    lib_bkgd.c    lib_box.c    lib_chgat.c   lib_clear.c
242     lib_clearok.c  lib_clrbot.c  lib_clreol.c lib_colorset.c lib_data.c
243     lib_delch.c    lib_delwin.c    lib_echo.c   lib_erase.c   lib_gen.c
244     lib_getstr.c  lib_hline.c  lib_immedok.c  lib_inchstr.c lib_insch.c
245     lib_insdel.c  lib_insstr.c lib_instr.c lib_isendwin.c lib_keyname.c
246     lib_leaveok.c   lib_move.c   lib_mvwin.c   lib_overlay.c  lib_pad.c
247     lib_printw.c  lib_redrawln.c  lib_scanw.c lib_screen.c lib_scroll.c
248     lib_scrollok.c      lib_scrreg.c      lib_set_term.c      lib_slk.c
249     lib_slkatr_set.c   lib_slkatrof.c   lib_slkatron.c  lib_slkatrset.c
250     lib_slkattr.c     lib_slkclear.c    lib_slkcolor.c    lib_slkinit.c
251     lib_slklab.c  lib_slkrefr.c lib_slkset.c lib_slktouch.c lib_touch.c
252     lib_unctrl.c lib_vline.c lib_wattroff.c lib_wattron.c lib_window.c
253
254   are  all  in  this  category.  They  are very unlikely to need change,
255   barring bugs or some fundamental reorganization in the underlying data
256   structures.
257
258   These files are used only for debugging support:
259
260     lib_trace.c     lib_traceatr.c    lib_tracebits.c    lib_tracechr.c
261     lib_tracedmp.c lib_tracemse.c trace_buf.c
262
263   It  is  rather unlikely you will ever need to change these, unless you
264   want to introduce a new debug trace level for some reason.
265
266   There  is  another  group  of  files  that  do direct I/O via tputs(),
267   computations  on  the  terminal  capabilities,  or  queries  to the OS
268   environment,  but  nevertheless have only fairly low complexity. These
269   include:
270
271     lib_acs.c   lib_beep.c   lib_color.c   lib_endwin.c   lib_initscr.c
272     lib_longname.c  lib_newterm.c  lib_options.c lib_termcap.c lib_ti.c
273     lib_tparm.c lib_tputs.c lib_vidattr.c read_entry.c.
274
275   They are likely to need revision only if ncurses is being ported to an
276   environment without an underlying terminfo capability representation.
277
278   These  files  have  serious  hooks  into  the  tty  driver  and signal
279   facilities:
280
281     lib_kernel.c lib_baudrate.c lib_raw.c lib_tstp.c lib_twait.c
282
283   If you run into porting snafus moving the package to another UNIX, the
284   problem  is  likely  to be in one of these files. The file lib_print.c
285   uses sleep(2) and also falls in this category.
286
287   Almost all of the real work is done in the files
288
289     hardscroll.c   hashmap.c   lib_addch.c  lib_doupdate.c  lib_getch.c
290     lib_mouse.c lib_mvcur.c lib_refresh.c lib_setup.c lib_vidattr.c
291
292   Most  of  the  algorithmic  complexity  in  the library lives in these
293   files.  If  there is a real bug in ncurses itself, it's probably here.
294   We'll tour some of these files in detail below (see The Engine Room).
295
296   Finally,  there  is  a  group  of  files  that is actually most of the
297   terminfo  compiler.  The reason this code lives in the ncurses library
298   is to support fallback to /etc/termcap. These files include
299
300     alloc_entry.c  captoinfo.c  comp_captab.c  comp_error.c comp_hash.c
301     comp_parse.c comp_scan.c parse_entry.c read_termcap.c write_entry.c
302
303   We'll discuss these in the compiler tour.
304
305The Engine Room
306
307  Keyboard Input
308
309   All  ncurses  input  funnels through the function wgetch(), defined in
310   lib_getch.c.  This function is tricky; it has to poll for keyboard and
311   mouse  events and do a running match of incoming input against the set
312   of defined special keys.
313
314   The  central  data  structure  in this module is a FIFO queue, used to
315   match   multiple-character   input   sequences   against   special-key
316   capabilities; also to implement pushback via ungetch().
317
318   The wgetch() code distinguishes between function key sequences and the
319   same  sequences  typed manually by doing a timed wait after each input
320   character  that  could  lead  a  function  key sequence. If the entire
321   sequence  takes  less  than  1  second,  it  is  assumed  to have been
322   generated by a function key press.
323
324   Hackers  bruised  by  previous encounters with variant select(2) calls
325   may  find  the  code  in  lib_twait.c  interesting.  It deals with the
326   problem that some BSD selects don't return a reliable time-left value.
327   The function timed_wait() effectively simulates a System V select.
328
329  Mouse Events
330
331   If the mouse interface is active, wgetch() polls for mouse events each
332   call,  before  it  goes  to  the  keyboard  for  input.  It  is  up to
333   lib_mouse.c how the polling is accomplished; it may vary for different
334   devices.
335
336   Under  xterm,  however,  mouse  event  notifications  come  in via the
337   keyboard  input  stream.  They  are  recognized  by  having  the kmous
338   capability  as a prefix. This is kind of klugey, but trying to wire in
339   recognition   of   a  mouse  key  prefix  without  going  through  the
340   function-key  machinery  would be just too painful, and this turns out
341   to  imply having the prefix somewhere in the function-key capabilities
342   at terminal-type initialization.
343
344   This  kluge  only  works  because  kmous  isn't  actually  used by any
345   historic terminal type or curses implementation we know of. Best guess
346   is  it's  a  relic  of some forgotten experiment in-house at Bell Labs
347   that  didn't  leave  any  traces  in the publicly-distributed System V
348   terminfo  files.  If System V or XPG4 ever gets serious about using it
349   again, this kluge may have to change.
350
351   Here are some more details about mouse event handling:
352
353   The lib_mouse()code is logically split into a lower level that accepts
354   event  reports  in  a  device-dependent format and an upper level that
355   parses mouse gestures and filters events. The mediating data structure
356   is a circular queue of event structures.
357
358   Functionally, the lower level's job is to pick up primitive events and
359   put  them  on  the circular queue. This can happen in one of two ways:
360   either  (a)  _nc_mouse_event()  detects  a  series  of  incoming mouse
361   reports  and queues them, or (b) code in lib_getch.c detects the kmous
362   prefix  in  the  keyboard  input  stream and calls _nc_mouse_inline to
363   queue up a series of adjacent mouse reports.
364
365   In either case, _nc_mouse_parse() should be called after the series is
366   accepted to parse the digested mouse reports (low-level events) into a
367   gesture (a high-level or composite event).
368
369  Output and Screen Updating
370
371   With the single exception of character echoes during a wgetnstr() call
372   (which  simulates  cooked-mode line editing in an ncurses window), the
373   library normally does all its output at refresh time.
374
375   The  main  job  is  to  go  from  the  current state of the screen (as
376   represented  in  the curscr window structure) to the desired new state
377   (as represented in the newscr window structure), while doing as little
378   I/O as possible.
379
380   The  brains  of this operation are the modules hashmap.c, hardscroll.c
381   and  lib_doupdate.c; the latter two use lib_mvcur.c. Essentially, what
382   happens looks like this:
383
384   The  hashmap.c  module tries to detect vertical motion changes between
385   the  real  and virtual screens. This information is represented by the
386   oldindex  members  in  the  newscr  structure.  These  are modified by
387   vertical-motion  and  clear  operations,  and  both are re-initialized
388   after each update. To this change-journalling information, the hashmap
389   code  adds  deductions  made using a modified Heckel algorithm on hash
390   values generated from the line contents.
391
392   The  hardscroll.c module computes an optimum set of scroll, insertion,
393   and   deletion   operations  to  make  the  indices  match.  It  calls
394   _nc_mvcur_scrolln() in lib_mvcur.c to do those motions.
395
396   Then  lib_doupdate.c  goes  to  work.  Its  job  is to do line-by-line
397   transformations  of curscr lines to newscr lines. Its main tool is the
398   routine  mvcur()  in  lib_mvcur.c.  This  routine does cursor-movement
399   optimization,  attempting to get from given screen location A to given
400   location B in the fewest output characters possible.
401
402   If  you  want to work on screen optimizations, you should use the fact
403   that  (in  the  trace-enabled  version  of  the  library) enabling the
404   TRACE_TIMES  trace  level  causes  a  report  to be emitted after each
405   screen  update  giving  the  elapsed  time  and  a count of characters
406   emitted  during  the  update.  You can use this to tell when an update
407   optimization improves efficiency.
408
409   In  the  trace-enabled  version of the library, it is also possible to
410   disable and re-enable various optimizations at runtime by tweaking the
411   variable  _nc_optimize_enable.  See  the  file include/curses.h.in for
412   mask values, near the end.
413
414                         The Forms and Menu Libraries
415
416   The  forms  and menu libraries should work reliably in any environment
417   you  can  port ncurses to. The only portability issue anywhere in them
418   is  what  flavor  of  regular expressions the built-in form field type
419   TYPE_REGEXP will recognize.
420
421   The  configuration  code  prefers the POSIX regex facility, modeled on
422   System  V's,  but  will  settle  for  BSD  regexps if the former isn't
423   available.
424
425   Historical  note:  the  panels code was written primarily to assist in
426   porting  u386mon  2.0 (comp.sources.misc v14i001-4) to systems lacking
427   panels  support; u386mon 2.10 and beyond use it. This version has been
428   slightly cleaned up for ncurses.
429
430                        A Tour of the Terminfo Compiler
431
432   The ncurses implementation of tic is rather complex internally; it has
433   to  do  a  trying  combination  of missions. This starts with the fact
434   that,  in  addition  to  its normal duty of compiling terminfo sources
435   into  loadable  terminfo binaries, it has to be able to handle termcap
436   syntax and compile that too into terminfo entries.
437
438   The  implementation  therefore  starts  with a table-driven, dual-mode
439   lexical analyzer (in comp_scan.c). The lexer chooses its mode (termcap
440   or terminfo) based on the first `,' or `:' it finds in each entry. The
441   lexer  does  all  the work of recognizing capability names and values;
442   the  grammar above it is trivial, just "parse entries till you run out
443   of file".
444
445Translation of Non-use Capabilities
446
447   Translation   of  most  things  besides  use  capabilities  is  pretty
448   straightforward.   The   lexical   analyzer's   tokenizer  hands  each
449   capability  name  to a hash function, which drives a table lookup. The
450   table entry yields an index which is used to look up the token type in
451   another table, and controls interpretation of the value.
452
453   One  possibly  interesting aspect of the implementation is the way the
454   compiler  tables  are  initialized.  All  the  tables are generated by
455   various  awk/sed/sh  scripts  from  a master table include/Caps; these
456   scripts  actually  write  C  initializers  which  are  linked  to  the
457   compiler. Furthermore, the hash table is generated in the same way, so
458   it  doesn't  have  to  be  generated at compiler startup time (another
459   benefit  of  this  organization  is  that  the  hash  table  can be in
460   shareable text space).
461
462   Thus, adding a new capability is usually pretty trivial, just a matter
463   of  adding  one  line to the include/Caps file. We'll have more to say
464   about this in the section on Source-Form Translation.
465
466Use Capability Resolution
467
468   The  background  problem  that  makes  tic tricky isn't the capability
469   translation  itself,  it's  the  resolution of use capabilities. Older
470   versions would not handle forward use references for this reason (that
471   is, a using terminal always had to follow its use target in the source
472   file).  By  doing  this,  they  got  away with a simple implementation
473   tactic;  compile  everything  as  it  blows by, then resolve uses from
474   compiled entries.
475
476   This  won't  do  for  ncurses.  The  problem  is  that  that the whole
477   compilation  process  has  to  be embeddable in the ncurses library so
478   that it can be called by the startup code to translate termcap entries
479   on  the  fly.  The  embedded  version  can't  go promiscuously writing
480   everything  it  translates  out  to  disk  --  for  one thing, it will
481   typically be running with non-root permissions.
482
483   So  our  tic  is  designed  to  parse  an  entire terminfo file into a
484   doubly-linked  circular  list of entry structures in-core, and then do
485   use  resolution  in-memory  before writing everything out. This design
486   has other advantages: it makes forward and back use-references equally
487   easy  (so  we get the latter for free), and it makes checking for name
488   collisions before they're written out easy to do.
489
490   And   this  is  exactly  how  the  embedded  version  works.  But  the
491   stand-alone  user-accessible  version  of  tic  partly  reverts to the
492   historical strategy; it writes to disk (not keeping in core) any entry
493   with no use references.
494
495   This  is  strictly  a  core-economy  kluge,  implemented  because  the
496   terminfo  master file is large enough that some core-poor systems swap
497   like crazy when you compile it all in memory...there have been reports
498   of  this process taking three hours, rather than the twenty seconds or
499   less typical on the author's development box.
500
501   So. The executable tic passes the entry-parser a hook that immediately
502   writes  out  the  referenced  entry if it has no use capabilities. The
503   compiler  main loop refrains from adding the entry to the in-core list
504   when  this hook fires. If some other entry later needs to reference an
505   entry  that  got  written  immediately, that's OK; the resolution code
506   will fetch it off disk when it can't find it in core.
507
508   Name  collisions  will  still  be  detected,  just not as cleanly. The
509   write_entry()   code   complains  before  overwriting  an  entry  that
510   postdates  the time of tic's first call to write_entry(), Thus it will
511   complain  about overwriting entries newly made during the tic run, but
512   not about overwriting ones that predate it.
513
514Source-Form Translation
515
516   Another use of tic is to do source translation between various termcap
517   and terminfo formats. There are more variants out there than you might
518   think; the ones we know about are described in the captoinfo(1) manual
519   page.
520
521   The  translation output code (dump_entry() in ncurses/dump_entry.c) is
522   shared  with  the  infocmp(1)  utility.  It  takes  the  same internal
523   representation  used  to  generate  the  binary  form  and dumps it to
524   standard output in a specified format.
525
526   The  include/Caps  file  has  a header comment describing ways you can
527   specify  source  translations  for  nonstandard  capabilities  just by
528   altering the master table. It's possible to set up capability aliasing
529   or  tell  the  compiler  to  plain  ignore  a given capability without
530   writing any C code at all.
531
532   For  circumstances where you need to do algorithmic translation, there
533   are  functions  in  parse_entry.c called after the parse of each entry
534   that are specifically intended to encapsulate such translations. This,
535   for  example,  is  where  the AIX box1 capability get translated to an
536   acsc string.
537
538                                Other Utilities
539
540   The  infocmp  utility  is just a wrapper around the same entry-dumping
541   code  used  by tic for source translation. Perhaps the one interesting
542   aspect  of  the  code  is the use of a predicate function passed in to
543   dump_entry()  to  control  which  capabilities  are  dumped.  This  is
544   necessary in order to handle both the ordinary De-compilation case and
545   entry difference reporting.
546
547   The  tput  and  clear  utilities  just  do an entry load followed by a
548   tputs() of a selected capability.
549
550                           Style Tips for Developers
551
552   See   the  TO-DO  file  in  the  top-level  directory  of  the  source
553   distribution for additions that would be particularly useful.
554
555   The  prefix  _nc_  should be used on library public functions that are
556   not  part  of  the  curses  API  in  order to prevent pollution of the
557   application  namespace.  If  you have to add to or modify the function
558   prototypes  in curses.h.in, read ncurses/MKlib_gen.sh first so you can
559   avoid  breaking XSI conformance. Please join the ncurses mailing list.
560   See  the INSTALL file in the top level of the distribution for details
561   on the list.
562
563   Look  for  the  string  FIXME  in  source  files to tag minor bugs and
564   potential problems that could use fixing.
565
566   Don't  try  to auto-detect OS features in the main body of the C code.
567   That's the job of the configuration system.
568
569   To hold down complexity, do make your code data-driven. Especially, if
570   you  can drive logic from a table filtered out of include/Caps, do it.
571   If  you  find  you  need  to augment the data in that file in order to
572   generate  the  proper table, that's still preferable to ad-hoc code --
573   that's why the fifth field (flags) is there.
574
575   Have fun!
576
577                                 Porting Hints
578
579   The  following  notes  are intended to be a first step towards DOS and
580   Macintosh ports of the ncurses libraries.
581
582   The  following library modules are `pure curses'; they operate only on
583   the  curses  internal  structures,  do all output through other curses
584   calls  (not  including  tputs()  and putp()) and do not call any other
585   UNIX  routines  such  as  signal(2)  or  the stdio library. Thus, they
586   should not need to be modified for single-terminal ports.
587
588     lib_addch.c    lib_addstr.c    lib_bkgd.c   lib_box.c   lib_clear.c
589     lib_clrbot.c   lib_clreol.c  lib_delch.c  lib_delwin.c  lib_erase.c
590     lib_inchstr.c  lib_insch.c  lib_insdel.c lib_insstr.c lib_keyname.c
591     lib_move.c   lib_mvwin.c   lib_newwin.c   lib_overlay.c   lib_pad.c
592     lib_printw.c  lib_refresh.c  lib_scanw.c  lib_scroll.c lib_scrreg.c
593     lib_set_term.c  lib_touch.c  lib_tparm.c  lib_tputs.c  lib_unctrl.c
594     lib_window.c panel.c
595
596   This module is pure curses, but calls outstr():
597
598     lib_getstr.c
599
600   These  modules  are  pure  curses,  except  that  they use tputs() and
601   putp():
602
603     lib_beep.c   lib_color.c   lib_endwin.c   lib_options.c   lib_slk.c
604     lib_vidattr.c
605
606   This modules assist in POSIX emulation on non-POSIX systems:
607
608   sigaction.c
609          signal calls
610
611   The    following   source   files   will   not   be   needed   for   a
612   single-terminal-type port.
613
614     alloc_entry.c   captoinfo.c   clear.c   comp_captab.c  comp_error.c
615     comp_hash.c   comp_main.c   comp_parse.c  comp_scan.c  dump_entry.c
616     infocmp.c parse_entry.c read_entry.c tput.c write_entry.c
617
618   The  following  modules will use open()/read()/write()/close()/lseek()
619   on files, but no other OS calls.
620
621   lib_screen.c
622          used to read/write screen dumps
623
624   lib_trace.c
625          used to write trace data to the logfile
626
627   Modules that would have to be modified for a port start here:
628
629   The  following  modules  are  `pure  curses'  but  contain assumptions
630   inappropriate for a memory-mapped port.
631
632   lib_longname.c
633          assumes there may be multiple terminals
634
635   lib_acs.c
636          assumes acs_map as a double indirection
637
638   lib_mvcur.c
639          assumes cursor moves have variable cost
640
641   lib_termcap.c
642          assumes there may be multiple terminals
643
644   lib_ti.c
645          assumes there may be multiple terminals
646
647   The following modules use UNIX-specific calls:
648
649   lib_doupdate.c
650          input checking
651
652   lib_getch.c
653          read()
654
655   lib_initscr.c
656          getenv()
657
658   lib_newterm.c
659   lib_baudrate.c
660   lib_kernel.c
661          various tty-manipulation and system calls
662
663   lib_raw.c
664          various tty-manipulation calls
665
666   lib_setup.c
667          various tty-manipulation calls
668
669   lib_restart.c
670          various tty-manipulation calls
671
672   lib_tstp.c
673          signal-manipulation calls
674
675   lib_twait.c
676          gettimeofday(), select().
677     _________________________________________________________________
678
679
680    Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
681
682   (Note: This is not the bug address!)
683