| Announcing ncurses 6.4 |
| |
| Overview |
| |
| The ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation of |
| curses in System V Release 4.0 (SVr4), 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 SVr4-curses |
| enhancements over BSD curses. SVr4 curses became the basis of X/Open |
| Curses. |
| |
| 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. |
| |
| Since 1995, ncurses has been ported to many systems: |
| * It is used in almost every system based on the Linux kernel (aside |
| from some embedded applications). |
| * It is used as the system curses library on OpenBSD, FreeBSD and |
| MacOS. |
| * It is used in environments such as Cygwin and MinGW. The first of |
| these was EMX on OS/2 Warp. |
| * It is used (though usually not as the system curses) on all of the |
| vendor unix systems, e.g., AIX, HP-UX, IRIX64, SCO, Solaris, |
| Tru64. |
| * It should work readily on any ANSI/POSIX-conforming unix. |
| |
| The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including |
| * captoinfo, a termcap conversion tool |
| * clear, utility for clearing the screen |
| * infocmp, the terminfo decompiler |
| * tabs, set tabs on a terminal |
| * tic, the terminfo compiler |
| * toe, list (table of) terminfo entries |
| * tput, utility for retrieving terminal capabilities in shell |
| scripts |
| * tset, to initialize the terminal |
| |
| Full manual pages are provided for the library and tools. |
| |
| The ncurses distribution is available at ncurses' homepage: |
| |
| https://invisible-island.net/archives/ncurses/ or |
| https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/ . |
| |
| It is also available at the GNU distribution site |
| |
| https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/ . |
| |
| Release Notes |
| |
| These notes are for ncurses 6.4, released December 31, 2022. |
| |
| This release is designed to be source-compatible with ncurses 5.0 |
| through 6.3; providing extensions to the application binary interface |
| (ABI). Although the source can still be configured to support the |
| ncurses 5 ABI, the reason for the release is to reflect improvements |
| to the ncurses 6 ABI and the supporting utility programs. |
| |
| There are, of course, numerous other improvements, listed in this |
| announcement. |
| |
| The most important bug-fixes/improvements dealt with robustness |
| issues. The release notes also mention some other bug-fixes, but are |
| focused on new features and improvements to existing features since |
| ncurses 6.3 release. |
| |
| Library improvements |
| |
| New features |
| |
| There are no new features in this release. |
| |
| Other improvements |
| |
| These are improvements to existing features: |
| * modify delscreen to more effectively delete all windows on the |
| given screen. |
| * modify wnoutrefresh to call pnoutrefresh if its parameter is a |
| pad, rather than treating it as an error, and modify new_panel to |
| permit its window-parameter to be a pad |
| * modify curses_trace() to show the trace-mask as symbols, e.g., |
| TRACE_ORDINARY, DEBUG_LEVEL(3). |
| * improve checks for valid mouse events when an intermediate mouse |
| state is not part of the mousemask specified by the caller |
| * allow extended-color number in opts parameter of wattr_on. |
| * improve _tracecchar_t2 formatting of base+combining character. |
| * trim out some unwanted linker options from ncurses*config and .pc |
| files seen in Fedora 36+. |
| * improve shell-scripts with shellcheck |
| * improve use of "trap" in shell scripts, using a script. |
| * modify make-tar.sh scripts to make timestamps more predictable. |
| |
| These are corrections to existing features: |
| * modify misc/gen-pkgconfig.in to allow for the case where the |
| library directory does not yet exist, since this is processed |
| before doing an install |
| * set trailing null on string passed from winsnstr to wins_nwstr. |
| * modify waddch_literal to allow for double-width base character |
| when merging a combining character |
| |
| Program improvements |
| |
| Several improvements were made to the utility programs: |
| |
| infocmp |
| |
| + rewrite canonical_name function of infocmp to ensure buffer |
| size |
| + improve readability of long parameterized expressions with |
| the infocmp "-f" option by allowing split before a "%p" |
| marker. |
| + modify verbose-option of infocmp, tic, toe to enable |
| debug-tracing if that is configured. |
| |
| tabs |
| limit tab-stop values to max-columns |
| |
| tic |
| add consistency check in tic for u6/u7/u8/u9 and NQ |
| capabilities. |
| |
| tput |
| corrected use of original tty-modes in init/reset subcommands |
| |
| Examples |
| |
| Along with the library and utilities, improvements were made to the |
| ncurses-examples. Most of this activity aimed at improving the |
| test-packages: |
| * add minimal -h (usage) and -V (version) getopt logic to all |
| ncurses-examples programs. |
| * fix an error in "@" command in test/ncurses.c F-menu |
| * add curses_trace to ifdef's for START_TRACE in test/test.priv.h |
| * improve pthread-configuration for test/worm.c |
| * add setlocale call to several test-programs. |
| * workaround in test/picsmap.c for use of floating point for rgb |
| values by ImageMagick 6.9.11, which appears to use the wrong upper |
| limit. |
| * use static libraries for AdaCurses test-package for Mageia, since |
| no gprbuild package is available. |
| * install Ada95 sample programs in libexecdir, adding a wrapper |
| script to invoke those. |
| * install ncurses-examples programs in libexecdir, adding a wrapper |
| script to invoke those. |
| |
| There are other new demo/test programs and reusable examples: |
| |
| test/combine |
| demonstrate combining characters |
| |
| test/test_delwin |
| demonstrate deleting a window |
| |
| test/test_mouse |
| observe mouse events in the raw terminal or parsed ncurses |
| modes |
| |
| test/test_unget_wch |
| demonstrate the unget_wch and unget functions |
| |
| Terminal database |
| |
| There are several new terminal descriptions: |
| * mosh |
| * mosh-256color |
| * teken-16color |
| * teken-sc |
| * teken-vt |
| * xgterm |
| |
| There are many changes to existing terminal descriptions. Some were |
| updates to several descriptions: |
| * make description-fields distinct |
| * fix errata in description fields |
| * add/use several building-blocks: |
| + aixterm+sl |
| + ansi+cpr |
| + apollo+vt132 |
| + decid+cpr |
| + ncr260vp+sl |
| + wyse+sl |
| + x10term+sl |
| + xterm+acs |
| + xterm+alt47 |
| |
| while others affected specific descriptions. These were retested, to |
| take into account changes by their developers: |
| * kitty |
| * teken |
| |
| while these are specific fixes based on reviewing documentation, user |
| reports, or warnings from tic: |
| |
| att610+cvis0 |
| amended note as per documentation for att610, att620, att730 |
| |
| kon, kon2, jfbterm |
| revise to undo "linux2.6" change to smacs/rmacs/enacs |
| |
| st-0.6 |
| add dim, ecma+strikeout |
| |
| foot+base |
| add xterm+sl-alt |
| |
| dec+sl |
| correct dsl in dec+sl |
| |
| mintty and tmux |
| correct setal in mintty/tmux entries, add to vte-2018 |
| |
| nsterm |
| modify nsterm to use xterm+alt1049 |
| |
| putty |
| modify putty to use xterm+alt1049 |
| |
| vte-2018 |
| add blink and setal |
| |
| A few entries use extensions (user-defined terminal capabilities): |
| * use ansi+enq and decid+cpr in cases where the terminal probably |
| supported the u6-u9 extension |
| * remove u6-u9 from teken-2018 |
| * use NQ to flag entries where the terminal does not support query |
| and response |
| * add/use bracketed+paste to help identify terminals supporting this |
| xterm feature |
| * modify samples for xterm mouse 1002/1003 modes to use 1006 mode, |
| and also provide for focus in/out responses |
| * xterm patch #371 supports DEC-compatible status-line. add dec+sl |
| to xterm-new, per xterm #371, add xterm-p371, add xterm-p370, for |
| use in older terminals, and set "xterm-new" to "xterm-p370" (to |
| ease adoption). |
| |
| Documentation |
| |
| As usual, this release |
| * improves documentation by describing new features, |
| * attempts to improve the description of features which users have |
| found confusing |
| * fills in overlooked descriptions of features which were described |
| in the NEWS file but treated sketchily in manual pages. |
| |
| In addition to providing background information to explain these |
| features and show how they evolved, there are corrections, |
| clarifications, etc.: |
| * Corrections: |
| + remove a stray '/' from description of %g in terminfo(5). |
| + correct/improve font-formatting in curs_getch.3x, as well as |
| other manual pages. |
| * New/improved history and portability sections: |
| + add portability notes for delscreen and delwin in manual. |
| + improve curs_slk.3x discussion of extensions and portability |
| * Other improvements: |
| + improve curs_bkgd.3x, explaining that bkgdset can affect |
| results for bkgd |
| + add note on portable memory-leak checking in curs_memleaks.3x |
| + expanded description in resizeterm.3x |
| + add section on releasing memory to curs_termcap.3x and |
| curs_terminfo.3x manpages. |
| + add clarification of the scope of dynamic variables in |
| terminfo(5). |
| + improve formatting of ncurses-intro.html and hackguide.html |
| + improve curs_clear.3x links to other pages |
| + update ncurses-howto, making documentation fixes along with |
| corrections to example programs. |
| + use newer version 1.36 of gnathtml for generating Ada html |
| files. |
| + update external links in Ada95.html |
| |
| There are no new manual pages (all of the manual page updates are to |
| existing pages). |
| |
| Interesting bug-fixes |
| |
| While there were many bugs fixed during development of ncurses 6.4, |
| only a few (the reason for this release) were both important and |
| interesting. Most of the bug-fixes were for local issues which did not |
| affect compatibility across releases. Since those are detailed in the |
| NEWS file no elaboration is needed here. |
| |
| The interesting bugs were those dealing with memory leaks and buffer |
| overflows. Although the utilities are designed for text files (which |
| they do properly), some choose to test them with non-text files. |
| * Text files contain no embedded nulls. Also, they end with a |
| newline. Feeding tic non-text files exposed a few cases where the |
| program did not check for those issues. As a result, further |
| processing of the input found limit-checks whose assumptions were |
| invalid. |
| * Fixing the limit-checks (first) found a problem with tic managing |
| the list of strings in a terminal description. In merging two |
| terminal descriptions (i.e., the "use=" feature), tic was not |
| allocating a complete copy. A quick repair for that introduced a |
| memory leak. |
| * The checks for non-text files are improved (i.e., embedded nulls |
| in the input file will cause tic to reject it rather than |
| attempting to process it). |
| * The string allocations in tic are likewise improved. |
| |
| Configuration changes |
| |
| Major changes |
| |
| There are no major changes. No new options were added. Several |
| improvements were made to configure checks. |
| |
| Configuration options |
| |
| There are a few new/modified configure options: |
| |
| --with-abi-version |
| add ABI 7 defaults to configure script. |
| |
| --with-caps |
| add warning in configure script if file specified for |
| "--with-caps" does not exist. |
| |
| --with-manpage-format |
| bzip2 and xz compression are now supported |
| |
| --with-xterm-kbs |
| add check/warning in configure script if option |
| "--with-xterm-kbs" is missing or inconsistent |
| |
| Portability |
| |
| Many of the portability changes are implemented via the configure |
| script: |
| * amend configure option's auto-search to account for systems where |
| none of the directories known to pkg-config exist |
| * corrected regex needed for older pkg-config used in Solaris 10 |
| * improve handling of --with-pkg-config-libdir option, allowing for |
| the case where either $PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR or the option value has a |
| colon-separated list of directories |
| * if the --with-pkg-config-libdir option is not given, use |
| ${libdir}/pkgconfig as a default |
| * improve search-path check for pkg-config, e.g., for Debian testing |
| which installs pkg-config with architecture-prefixes. |
| * build-fix for cross-compiling to MingW, conditionally add -lssp |
| * improve configure check for getttynam |
| * fixes to build with dietlibc: |
| + add configure check for fpathconf |
| + add configure check for math sine/cosine, needed in |
| test/tclock, and eliminate pow() from test/hanoi |
| + use wcsnlen as an alternative to wmemchr if it is not found |
| * modify configure macro CF_BUILD_CC to check if the build-compiler |
| works, rather than that it is different from the cross-compiler, |
| e.g., to accommodate a compiler which can be used for either |
| purpose with different flags |
| * modify configure/scripts to work around interference by GNU grep |
| 3.8 |
| |
| Here are some of the other portability fixes: |
| * change man_db.renames to template, to handle ncurses*-config |
| script with the --extra-suffix configure option. |
| * update CF_XOPEN_SOURCE macro, adding variants "gnueabi" and |
| "gnueabihf" to get _DEFAULT_SOURCE special case, as well as adding |
| GNU libc suffixes for "abi64", "abin32", "x32" to distinguish it |
| from other libc flavors. |
| * work around musl's nonstandard use of feature test macros by |
| adding a definition for NCURSES_WIDECHAR to the generated ".pc" |
| and *-config files. |
| * use "command -v" rather than "type" in Ada95/gen/Makefile.in to |
| fix a portability issue. |
| _________________________________________________________________ |
| |
| Features of ncurses |
| |
| The ncurses package is fully upward-compatible with SVr4 (System V |
| Release 4) curses: |
| * All of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are documented). |
| * ncurses supports all of the for SVr4 curses features including |
| keyboard mapping, color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and |
| automatic recognition of keypad and function keys. |
| * ncurses provides these SVr4 add-on libraries (not part of X/Open |
| Curses): |
| + the panels library, supporting a stack of windows with |
| backing store. |
| + the menus library, supporting a uniform but flexible |
| interface for menu programming. |
| + the form library, supporting data collection through |
| on-screen forms. |
| * ncurses's terminal database is fully compatible with that used by |
| SVr4 curses. |
| + ncurses supports user-defined capabilities which it can see, |
| but which are hidden from SVr4 curses applications using the |
| same terminal database. |
| + It can be optionally configured to match the format used in |
| related systems such as AIX and Tru64. |
| + Alternatively, ncurses can be configured to use hashed |
| databases rather than the directory of files used by SVr4 |
| curses. |
| * The ncurses utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo |
| entries for use with less capable curses/terminfo versions such as |
| the HP-UX and AIX ports. |
| |
| The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over SVr4: |
| * 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). |
| * Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost |
| corner of the screen if your terminal has an insert-character |
| capability. |
| * Ada95 and C++ bindings. |
| * Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and FreeBSD |
| and OS/2 console windows. |
| * Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm package. |
| * The function wresize allows you to resize windows, preserving |
| their data. |
| * The function use_default_colors allows you to use the terminal's |
| default colors for the default color pair, achieving the effect of |
| transparent colors. |
| * The functions keyok and define_key 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. |
| * Support for direct-color terminals, such as modern xterm. |
| * Support for 256-color terminals, such as modern xterm. |
| * Support for 16-color terminals, such as aixterm and modern xterm. |
| * Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now features a |
| cursor-local-movement computation more efficient than either BSD's |
| or System V's. |
| * 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 quickch routine. |
| * 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. |
| * 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). |
| * The tic/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the ability to |
| translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and AT&T extension |
| sets. |
| * A BSD-like tset utility is provided. |
| * 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. |
| * 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.) |
| * 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. |
| * The table-of-entries utility toe makes it easy for users to see |
| exactly what terminal types are available on the system. |
| * The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro entry point |
| has a corresponding function which may be linked (and will be |
| prototype-checked) if the macro definition is disabled with |
| #undef. |
| * Extensive documentation is provided (see the Additional Reading |
| section of the ncurses FAQ for online documentation). |
| |
| Applications using ncurses |
| |
| The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs |
| (including a few games). These are available separately as |
| ncurses-examples |
| |
| The ncurses library has been tested with a wide variety of |
| applications including: |
| |
| aptitude |
| FrontEnd to Apt, the debian package manager |
| |
| https://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude |
| |
| cdk |
| Curses Development Kit |
| |
| https://invisible-island.net/cdk/ |
| |
| ded |
| directory-editor |
| |
| https://invisible-island.net/ded/ |
| |
| dialog |
| the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and the |
| basis for similar install/configure applications on many |
| systems. |
| |
| https://invisible-island.net/dialog/ |
| |
| lynx |
| the text WWW browser |
| |
| https://lynx.invisible-island.net/ |
| |
| mutt |
| mail utility |
| |
| http://www.mutt.org/ |
| |
| ncftp |
| file-transfer utility |
| |
| https://www.ncftp.com/ |
| |
| nvi |
| New vi uses ncurses. |
| |
| https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/vi |
| |
| ranger |
| A console file manager with VI key bindings in Python. |
| |
| https://ranger.github.io/ |
| |
| tin |
| newsreader, supporting color, MIME |
| |
| http://www.tin.org/ |
| |
| vifm |
| File manager with vi like keybindings |
| |
| https://vifm.info/ |
| |
| as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support alone: |
| |
| minicom |
| terminal emulator for serial modem connections |
| |
| https://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/ |
| |
| mosh |
| a replacement for ssh. |
| |
| https://mosh.org/ |
| |
| tack |
| terminfo action checker |
| |
| https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tack.html |
| |
| tmux |
| terminal multiplexor |
| |
| https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki |
| |
| vile |
| vi-like-emacs may be built to use the terminfo, termcap or |
| curses interfaces. |
| |
| https://invisible-island.net/vile/ |
| |
| and finally, those which use only the termcap interface: |
| |
| emacs |
| text editor |
| |
| https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ |
| |
| less |
| The most commonly used pager (a program that displays text |
| files). |
| |
| http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/ |
| |
| screen |
| terminal multiplexor |
| |
| https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/ |
| |
| vim |
| text editor |
| |
| https://www.vim.org/ |
| |
| Development activities |
| |
| Zeyd Ben-Halim started ncurses from a previous package pcurses, |
| written by Pavel Curtis. Eric S. Raymond continued development. |
| Juergen Pfeifer wrote most of the form and menu libraries. |
| |
| Ongoing development work is done by Thomas E. Dickey. Thomas E. Dickey |
| has acted as the maintainer for the Free Software Foundation, which |
| held a copyright on ncurses for releases 4.2 through 6.1. Following |
| the release of ncurses 6.1, effective as of release 6.2, copyright for |
| ncurses reverted to Thomas E. Dickey (see the ncurses FAQ for |
| additional information). |
| |
| Contact the current maintainers at |
| |
| bug-ncurses@gnu.org |
| |
| To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to |
| |
| bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org |
| |
| containing the line: |
| |
| subscribe <name>@<host.domain> |
| |
| This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the development |
| and testing of this package. |
| |
| Beta versions of ncurses are made available at |
| |
| https://invisible-island.net/archives/ncurses/current/ and |
| https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/current/ . |
| |
| Patches to the current release are made available at |
| |
| https://invisible-island.net/archives/ncurses/6.3/ and |
| https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/6.3/ . |
| |
| There is an archive of the mailing list here: |
| |
| http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses (also https) |
| |
| Related resources |
| |
| The release notes make scattered references to these pages, which may |
| be interesting by themselves: |
| * ncurses licensing |
| * Symbol versioning in ncurses |
| * Comments on ncurses versus slang (S-Lang) |
| * Comments on OpenBSD |
| * tack - terminfo action checker |
| * tctest - termcap library checker |
| * Terminal Database |
| |
| Other resources |
| |
| The distribution provides a newer version of the terminfo-format |
| terminal description file once maintained by Eric Raymond . Unlike the |
| older version, the termcap and terminfo data are provided in the same |
| file, which also provides several user-definable extensions beyond the |
| X/Open specification. |
| |
| You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics not |
| covered in the terminfo file at Richard Shuford's archive . The |
| collection of computer manuals at bitsavers.org has also been useful. |
| |
| * Overview |
| * Release Notes |
| + Library improvements |
| o New features |
| o Other improvements |
| + Program improvements |
| o Utilities |
| o Examples |
| + Terminal database |
| + Documentation |
| + Interesting bug-fixes |
| + Configuration changes |
| o Major changes |
| o Configuration options |
| + Portability |
| * Features of ncurses |
| * Applications using ncurses |
| * Development activities |
| * Related resources |
| * Other resources |
