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<h1>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</h1>
<p>The ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation
of curses in System V Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo
format, supports pads and color and multiple highlights and forms
characters and function-key mapping, and has all the other
SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD curses.</p>
<p>In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared
that he considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the
keepers of Unix releases such as BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to
switch over to ncurses.</p>
<p>The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It has been in
use for some time with OpenBSD as the system curses library, and
on FreeBSD and NetBSD as an external package. It should port
easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported
to OS/2 Warp!</p>
<p>The distribution includes the library and support utilities,
including a terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1),
clear(1), tput(1), tset(1), and a termcap conversion tool
captoinfo(1). Full manual pages are provided for the library and
tools.</p>
<p>The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at the
GNU distribution site <a href=
"ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/</a> .<br>
It is also available at <a href=
"ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a> .</p>
<h1>Release Notes</h1>
<p>This release is designed to be upward compatible from ncurses
5.0 through 5.8; very few applications will require
recompilation, depending on the platform. These are the
highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.8 release.</p>
<p>This is a bug-fix release, correcting a small number of urgent
problems in the ncurses library from the 5.8 release.</p>
<p>It also improves the Ada95 binding:</p>
<ul>
<li>fixes a longstanding portability problem with its use of
the <a href=
"http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/form_fieldtype.3x">set_field_type</a>
function. Because that function uses variable-length argument
lists, its interface with gnat does not work with certain
platforms.</li>
<li>improves configurability and portability, particularly when
built separately from the main ncurses tree. The 5.8 release
introduced scripts which can be used to construct separate
tarballs for the Ada95 and ncurses examples.
<p>Those were a proof of concept. For the 5.9 release, those
scripts are augmented with rpm- and dpkg-scripts used in test
builds against a variety of gnat- and system ncurses versions
as old as gnat 3.15 and ncurses 5.4 (see snapshots and
systems tested <a href=
"http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-Ada95.html">here</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>additional improvements were made for portability of the
ncurses examples, adding rpm- and dpkg-scripts for test-builds.
See <a href=
"http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html">this
page</a> for snapshots and other information.</li>
</ul>
<h1>Features of Ncurses</h1>
<p>The ncurses package is fully compatible with SVr4 (System V
Release 4) curses:</p>
<ul>
<li>All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are
documented).</li>
<li>Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard
mapping, color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and
automatic recognition of keypad and function keys.</li>
<li>An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting a stack
of windows with backing store, is included.</li>
<li>An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting a
uniform but flexible interface for menu programming, is
included.</li>
<li>An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting data
collection through on-screen forms, is included.</li>
<li>Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1)
implementation are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format
SVr4 curses uses.</li>
<li>The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo
entries for use with less capable
<strong>curses</strong>/<strong>terminfo</strong> versions such
as the HP/UX and AIX ports.</li>
</ul>
<p>The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over
SVr4:</p>
<ul>
<li>The API is 8-bit clean and base-level conformant with the
X/OPEN curses specification, XSI curses (that is, it implements
all BASE level features, and most EXTENDED features). It
includes many function calls not supported under SVr4 curses
(but portability of all calls is documented so you can use the
SVr4 subset only).</li>
<li>Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the
rightmost-bottommost corner of the screen if your terminal has
an insert-character capability.</li>
<li>Ada95 and C++ bindings.</li>
<li>Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and
FreeBSD and OS/2 console windows.</li>
<li>Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm
package.</li>
<li>The function <code>wresize</code> allows you to resize
windows, preserving their data.</li>
<li>The function <code>use_default_colors</code> allows you to
use the terminal's default colors for the default color pair,
achieving the effect of transparent colors.</li>
<li>The functions <code>keyok</code> and
<code>define_key</code> allow you to better control the use of
function keys, e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE, or by
defining more than one control sequence to map to a given key
code.</li>
<li>Support for 256-color terminals, such as modern xterm, when
configured using the <code>--enable-ext-colors</code>
option.</li>
<li>Support for 16-color terminals, such as <em>aixterm</em>
and <em>modern xterm</em>.</li>
<li>Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now
features a cursor-local-movement computation more efficient
than either BSD's or System V's.</li>
<li>Super hardware scrolling support. The screen-update code
incorporates a novel, simple, and cheap algorithm that enables
it to make optimal use of hardware scrolling, line-insertion,
and line-deletion for screen-line movements. This algorithm is
more powerful than the 4.4BSD curses <code>quickch</code>
routine.</li>
<li>Real support for terminals with the magic-cookie glitch.
The screen-update code will refrain from drawing a highlight if
the magic- cookie unattributed spaces required just before the
beginning and after the end would step on a non-space
character. It will automatically shift highlight boundaries
when doing so would make it possible to draw the highlight
without changing the visual appearance of the screen.</li>
<li>It is possible to generate the library with a list of
pre-loaded fallback entries linked to it so that it can serve
those terminal types even when no terminfo tree or termcap file
is accessible (this may be useful for support of
screen-oriented programs that must run in single-user
mode).</li>
<li>The tic(1)/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the
ability to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and
AT&T extension sets.</li>
<li>A BSD-like tset(1) utility is provided.</li>
<li>The ncurses library and utilities will automatically read
terminfo entries from $HOME/.terminfo if it exists, and compile
to that directory if it exists and the user has no write access
to the system directory. This feature makes it easier for users
to have personal terminfo entries without giving up access to
the system terminfo directory.</li>
<li>You may specify a path of directories to search for
compiled descriptions with the environment variable
TERMINFO_DIRS (this generalizes the feature provided by
TERMINFO under stock System V.)</li>
<li>In terminfo source files, use capabilities may refer not
just to other entries in the same source file (as in System V)
but also to compiled entries in either the system terminfo
directory or the user's $HOME/.terminfo directory.</li>
<li>A script (<strong>capconvert</strong>) is provided to help
BSD users transition from termcap to terminfo. It gathers the
information in a TERMCAP environment variable and/or a
~/.termcap local entries file and converts it to an equivalent
local terminfo tree under $HOME/.terminfo.</li>
<li>Automatic fallback to the /etc/termcap file can be compiled
in when it is not possible to build a terminfo tree. This
feature is neither fast nor cheap, you don't want to use it
unless you have to, but it's there.</li>
<li>The table-of-entries utility <strong>toe</strong> makes it
easy for users to see exactly what terminal types are available
on the system.</li>
<li>The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro
entry point have a corresponding function which may be linked
(and will be prototype-checked) if the macro definition is
disabled with <code>#undef</code>.</li>
<li>An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document
provides a narrative introduction to the curses programming
interface.</li>
</ul>
<h1>State of the Package</h1>
<p>Numerous bugs present in earlier versions have been fixed; the
library is far more reliable than it used to be. Bounds checking
in many `dangerous' entry points has been improved. The code is
now type-safe according to gcc -Wall. The library has been
checked for malloc leaks and arena corruption by the Purify
memory-allocation tester.</p>
<p>The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of
applications including (versions starting with those noted):</p>
<dl>
<dt>cdk</dt>
<dd>Curses Development Kit<br>
<a href=
"http://invisible-island.net/cdk/">http://invisible-island.net/cdk/</a><br>
<a href=
"http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/">http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/</a></dd>
<dt>ded</dt>
<dd>directory-editor<br>
<a href=
"http://invisible-island.net/ded/">http://invisible-island.net/ded/</a></dd>
<dt>dialog</dt>
<dd>the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and
the basis for similar applications on GNU/Linux.<br>
<a href=
"http://invisible-island.net/dialog/">http://invisible-island.net/dialog/</a></dd>
<dt>lynx</dt>
<dd>the character-screen WWW browser<br>
<a href=
"http://lynx.isc.org/release/">http://lynx.isc.org/release/</a></dd>
<dt>Midnight Commander</dt>
<dd>file manager<br>
<a href=
"http://www.midnight-commander.org/">http://www.midnight-commander.org/</a></dd>
<dt>mutt</dt>
<dd>mail utility<br>
<a href="http://www.mutt.org/">http://www.mutt.org/</a></dd>
<dt>ncftp</dt>
<dd>file-transfer utility<br>
<a href="http://www.ncftp.com/">http://www.ncftp.com/</a></dd>
<dt>nvi</dt>
<dd>New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7
and later.<br>
<a href=
"https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi">https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi</a><br>
</dd>
<dt>pinfo</dt>
<dd>Lynx-like info browser. <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/</a></dd>
<dt>tin</dt>
<dd>newsreader, supporting color, MIME <a href=
"http://www.tin.org/">http://www.tin.org/</a></dd>
</dl>
<p>as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support
alone:</p>
<dl>
<dt>minicom</dt>
<dd>terminal emulator<br>
<a href=
"http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/">http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/</a></dd>
<dt>vile</dt>
<dd>vi-like-emacs<br>
<a href=
"http://invisible-island.net/vile/">http://invisible-island.net/vile/</a></dd>
</dl>
<p>The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs
(including a few games).</p>
<h2>Who's Who and What's What</h2>
<p>Zeyd Ben-Halim started it from a previous package pcurses,
written by Pavel Curtis. Eric S. Raymond continued development.
Jürgen Pfeifer wrote most of the form and menu libraries.
Ongoing work is being done by <a href=
"mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net">Thomas Dickey</a>. Thomas
Dickey acts as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation,
which holds the copyright on ncurses. Contact the current
maintainers at <a href=
"mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">bug-ncurses@gnu.org</a>.</p>
<p>To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to
<code>bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org</code> containing the line:</p>
<pre>
subscribe <name>@<host.domain>
</pre>
<p>This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the
development and testing of this package.</p>
<p>Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release
are made available at <a href=
"ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a> .</p>
<p>There is an archive of the mailing list here:</p>
<p><a href=
"http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses">http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses</a>
(also <a href=
"https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses">https</a>)</p>
<h2>Future Plans</h2>
<ul>
<li>Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization
support.</li>
<li>Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.</li>
</ul>
<p>We need people to help with these projects. If you are
interested in working on them, please join the ncurses list.</p>
<h2>Other Related Resources</h2>
<p>The distribution provides a newer version of the
terminfo-format terminal description file once maintained by
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/">Eric
Raymond</a> . Unlike the older version, the termcap and
terminfo data are provided in the same file, and provides several
user-definable extensions beyond the X/Open specification.</p>
<p>You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics
not covered in the terminfo file at <a href=
"http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal">
Richard Shuford's archive</a> .</p>
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