In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared that he considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and is encouraging the keepers of Unix releases such as BSD/OS, freeBSD and netBSD to switch over to ncurses.
The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It should port easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported to OS/2 Warp!
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.
The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at
the GNU distribution site
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses.
It is also available at
ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses.
Interface changes:
ospeed variable back to
short to match its use in legacy applications. It was
altered after ncurses 4.2 to speed_t to repair a type
mismatch which was introduced after 1.9.4 in 1995. The principal
users of termcap continued to use short, which is
not the same size.
NOTE: A few applications will have to be recompiled
(about 1% of the programs in a typical Linux distribution,
10% of the programs that use ncurses). These are easy to
identify with nm or strings.
_nc_can_clear_with(), which
was built with the configure --enable-expanded option but not used.
chtype values in the debug library, and for better
access and buffer limit checking.
tgoto() to make it better support existing
termcap applications which use hardcoded strings rather than obtain
all of their information from the termcap file. If the string does
not appear to be a terminfo string (i.e., does not refer to a "%p"
parameter, or terminfo-style padding), and termcap support is configured, tgoto()
will interpret it as termcap. Otherwise, as before, it will use
tparm().
tgoto() changes work properly,
added checks to tic which report capabilities that do
not reference the expected number of parameters.
--disable-root-environ adds runtime checks
which tell ncurses to disregard $TERMINFO and similar environment
variables if the current user is root, or running setuid/setgid.
--disable-assumed-color allows you to use the
pre-5.1 convention of default colors used for color-pair 0 to be
configured (see assume_default_colors()).
--program-prefix, including the
manpage names and cross references.
--with-database allows you to specify a
different terminfo source-file to install. On OS/2 EMX, the
default is misc/emx.src, otherwise misc/terminfo.src
--with-default-terminfo-dir allows you to
specify the default terminfo database directory.
--with-libtool allows you to build with
libtool. NOTE: libtool
uses a different notation for numbering shared library versions
from the existing ncurses configuration.
--with-manpage-tbl causes the manpages to be
preprocessed by tbl(1) prior to installation,
--without-curses-h causes the installation
process to install curses.h as ncurses.h and make appropriate
changes to headers and manpages.
--install-prefix configure
option from INSTALL_PREFIX to DESTDIR
(the latter has become common usage although the name is
misleading).
ld -rpath options (e.g., Linux, and Solaris)
to use an absolute pathname for the build tree's lib directory,
avoiding confusion with directories relative to the current one
with the installed programs.
misc/run_tic.in to use
tic -o, to eliminate dependency on
$TERMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which would be misinterpreted by older
versions of
opRMINFO variable for installs.
screen's terminfo entry
since otherwise the FreeBSD port makes it pass termcap equivalents
to tgoto, which woul