This release is designed to be source-compatible with ncurses 5.0
through 5.9; providing a new application binary interface (ABI).
Although the source can still be configured to support the ncurses 5
ABI, the intent of the release is to provide extensions which are
generally useful, but binary-incompatible with ncurses 5:
* Extend the cchar_t structure to allow more than 16 colors to be
encoded.
* Modify the encoding of mouse state to make room for a 5th mouse
button. That allows one to use ncurses with a wheel mouse with
xterm or similar X terminal emulators.
There are, of course, numerous other improvements, including
* fixes made based on the Clang and Coverity static analyzers.
* memory leak fixes using Valgrind
The release notes mention some bug-fixes, but are focused on new
features and improvements to existing features log since ncurses 5.9
release.
While the intent of the release is to provide a new stable ABI, there
are other development activities which are summarized below.
* The original release plan, e.g., for "5.10" was to improve the
MinGW port. Ultimately that was completed (wide-character support,
mouse, etc), but was deferred to focus on termcap support and
performance issues. Also, pinpointing the problems with Console2
took a while.
* A review of termcap compatibility in 2011 led to several minor
fixes in the library and improvements to utilities. To do this
properly, a review of the various extent termcap implementations
was needed.
The [11]termcap library checker (tctest) (not part of ncurses) was
one result. A followup review of performance using
[12]ncurses-examples in 2014 led to additional improvements.
* Output buffering provided a further, but worthwhile distraction. A
bug report in 2012 regarding the use of signal handlers in
ncurses) pointed out [13]a problem with the use of unsafe
functions for handling SIGTSTP. Other signals could be addressed
with workarounds; repairing SIGTSTP required a different approach.
The solution required changing internal behavior of the library:
how it handles output buffering.
Now ncurses buffers its own output, independently of the standard
output. A few applications relied upon the library's direct reuse
of the standard output buffering; however that is unspecified
behavior and has never been a recommended practice. Identifying
these applications as well as refining the change to permit
low-level applications to work consistently took time.
* Since the introduction of the experimental support for 256 colors
early in [14]2005 (released in [15]ncurses 5.5), there has been
increased user interest. Almost all packagers continue providing
the ncurses ABI 5 which cannot support 256 colors.
* Symbol versioning, or the lack of it in ncurses, is the main
reason why packagers would be reluctant to add a new ncurses ABI.
This release provides the new ABI along with script-generated
lists of versioned symbols which can be used for both ABI 5 and 6
(with distinct names to keep the two separate). This took time to
development, as reported in [16]Symbol versioning in ncurses.
Library improvements
Output buffering
X/Open curses provides more than one initialization function:
* [17]initscr (the simplest) accepts no parameters.
* [18]newterm accepts parameters for the stream input and output
* [19]setupterm (the low-level function) accepts a parameter for the
file descriptor of the output.
They are documented in X/Open as if initscr calls newterm using stdout
for output stream, and in turn newterm calls setupterm using
fileno(stdout) for the file descriptor. As long as an implementation
acts as if it does this, it conforms. In practice, implementations do
what is implied. This creates a problem: the low-level setupterm
function's file descriptor is unbuffered, while newterm implies
buffered output. X/Open Curses says that all output is done through
the file descriptor, and does not say how the output stream is
actually used.
Initially, ncurses used the file descriptor (obtained from the output
stream passed to newterm) for changing the terminal modes, and relied
upon the output parameter of newterm for buffered output. Later (to
avoid using unsafe buffered I/O in signal handlers), ncurses was
modified to use the file descriptor (unbuffered output) when cleaning
up on receipt of a signal. Otherwise (when not handling a signal), it
continued to use the buffered output.
That approach worked reasonably well and as a side effect, using the
same buffered output as an application might use for printf meant that
no flushing was needed when switching between normal- and
screen-modes.
There were a couple of problems:
* to get good performance, curses (not only ncurses, but SVr4 curses
in general) set an output buffer using setbuf or similar function.
There is no standard (or portable) way to turn that output buffer
off, and revert to line-buffering. The [20]NCURSES_NO_SETBUF
environment variable did make it optional.
* to handle SIGTSTP (the "stop" signal), ncurses relied upon unsafe
functions. That is, due to the complexity of the feature, it
relied upon reusing existing functions which should not have been
called via the signal handler.
Conveniently, solving the second problem (by making ncurses do its own
output buffering) also fixed the first one. But there were special
cases to resolve: [21]low-level functions such as mvcur, putp, vidattr
explicitly use the standard output. Those functions were reused
internally, and required modification to distinguish whether they were
used by the high-level or low-level interfaces.
Finally, there may still be a few programs which should be modified to
improve their portability, e.g., adding an
fflush(stdout);
when switching from "[22]shell" mode to "[23]program" (curses) mode.
Those are fairly rare because most programmers have learned not to mix
printf and [24]printw.
Symbol versioning
This release introduces symbol-versioning to ncurses because without
it, the change of ABI would be less successful. A lengthy discussion
will be presented in [25]Symbol versioning in ncurses. These notes
summarize what has changed, and what can be done with the new release.
Symbol-versioning allows the developers of a library to mark each
public symbol (both data and functions) with an identifier denoting
the library name and the version for which it was built. By doing
this, users of the library have a way to help ensure that applications
do not accidentally load an incompatible library. In addition, private
symbols can be hidden entirely.
This release provides sample files for the four principal
configurations of ncurses libraries: ncurses, ncursesw, ncursest and
ncursestw. Each sample is given in two forms:
".map"
These list all public symbols, together with version names.
".sym"
These list all public symbols, without version names.
The sample files are generated by scripts which take into account a
few special cases such as [26]tack to omit many of the ncurses private
symbols (beginning with "_nc_"). Here are counts of globals versus
locals:
Config Symbols Globals Locals "_nc_"
ncurses 976 796 180 332
ncursesw 1089 905 184 343
ncursest 979 804 175 358
ncursestw 1098 914 184 372
Although only four sample configurations are presented, each is formed
by merging symbols from several combinations of configure-script
options, taking into account advice from downstream packagers. Because
they are formed by merging, the sample files may list a symbol which
is not in a given package. That is expected. The samples have been
tested and are working with systems (such as Fedora, FreeBSD and
Debian) which fully support this feature. There are other systems
which do not support the feature, and a few (such as Solaris) which
provide incomplete support.
The version-naming convention used allows these sample files to build
distinct libraries for ABI 5 and 6. Version names consist of
* configuration name, e.g., "NCURSESW" for the wide-character
libraries
* ABI version (if not 5)
* library name for two special cases which have the same interface
across configurations: "TINFO" and "TIC"
* release version
* patch date (for the release version)
For example, running nm -D on the libraries in the ncurses6 test
package shows these symbol-versions:
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TIC_5.0.19991023
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TIC_5.1.20000708
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TIC_5.5.20051010
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TIC_5.7.20081102
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TIC_5.9.20150530
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.0.19991023
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.1.20000708
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.2.20001021
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.3.20021019
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.4.20040208
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.5.20051010
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.6.20061217
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.7.20081102
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.8.20110226
0000000000000000 A NCURSES6_TINFO_5.9.20150530
0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.1.20000708
0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.3.20021019
0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.4.20040208
0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.5.20051010
0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.6.20061217
0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.7.20081102
0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.8.20110226
0000000000000000 A NCURSESW6_5.9.20150530
As a special case, this release (which makes the final change for ABI
5) is marked with release version 5.9 and patch date 20150530.
Miscellaneous
The new release has several improvements for performance and building.
For instance:
* several files in ncurses- and progs-directories were modified to
allow const data used in internal tables to be put by the linker
into the readonly text segment.
* various improvements were made to building the Ada95 binding, both
in simplifying the generated files as well as improving the way it
uses gnatmake
There are also new features in the libraries:
* added [27]use_tioctl function
* added [28]wgetdelay to retrieve _delay member of WINDOW if it
happens to be opaque, e.g., in the pthread configuration.
* added [29]A_ITALIC extension.
* added form library extension [30]O_DYNAMIC_JUSTIFY option which
can be used to override the different treatment of justification
for static versus dynamic fields .
* rewrote [31]putwin and [32]getwin, making an extended version
which is capable of reading screen-dumps between the wide/normal
ncurses configurations. These are text files, except for a magic
code at the beginning:
0 string \210\210 Screen-dump (ncurses)
* several changes to mouse support include:
+ added decoder for xterm SGR 1006 mouse mode.
+ added experimental support for "%u" format to terminfo.
+ improved behavior of wheel-mice for xterm protocol: noting
that there are only button-presses for buttons "4" and "5",
so there is no need to wait to combine events into
double-clicks .
There are a few new configure options dealing with library
customization:
* add "--enable-ext-putwin" configure option to turn on the extended
putwin/getwin. By default, this is enabled for ABI 6 and disabled
with ABI 5.
* add "--enable-string-hacks" option to control whether strlcat and
strlcpy may be used. Because ncurses already does the requisite
buffer-limit checks, this feature is mainly of interest to quiet
compiler-warnings on a few systems.
* add configure option "--with-tparm-arg" to allow [33]tparm's
parameters to be something more likely to be the same size as a
pointer, e.g., intptr_t (again, the default is set for ABI 6).
Program improvements
Utilities
Most of the termcap-related changes based on development of [34]tctest
(termcap library checker) are implemented in the tic and infocmp
programs rather than affecting the library. As noted in the
[35]discussion of tctest, ncurses's ability to translate between
terminfo and termcap formats has been improved at different times, but
subject to feedback from "real" termcap users. There are very few of
those. Nowadays, virtually all termcap users are using ncurses (or
NetBSD, with its own terminfo library) and their programs are actually
using terminfo rather than termcap data.
Still, there are a few. A comment about the translation of the ASCII
NUL character prompted a review:
* Both terminfo and termcap store string capabilities as
NUL-terminated strings.
* In terminfo, a \0 in a terminal description is stored as \200.
* There are no (known) terminals which would behave differently when
sent \0 or \200.
* When translating to terminfo format (or displaying a printable
version of an entry using infocmp), ncurses shows \200 as \0.
* It has done this since 1998 (quoting from the NEWS file):
[36]980103
...
+ modify _nc_tic_expand() to generate \0 rather than \200.
...
+ correct translation of terminfo "^@", to \200, like \0.
* However, the _nc_tic_expand function (which optionally produces
terminfo or termcap format) did not address this special case for
termcap. Even the later 4.4BSD [37]cgetstr interprets a \0
literally, ending that string (rather than using the terminfo
improvement).
As a result of the review, several improvements were made to ncurses
translation to/from termcap format -- and improving the checks made in
tic for consistency of entries. Most of these are not of general
interest, except for two new command-line options for tic and infocmp:
* the "-0" option generates termcap/terminfo source on a single
line.
* the "-K" option provides stricter BSD-compatibility for termcap
output.
Other user-visible improvements and new features include:
* added "-D" option to tic and infocmp, to show the database
locations that it could use.
* added "-s" option to toe, to sort its output.
* extended "-c" and "-n" options of infocmp to allow comparing more
than two entries.
* modified toe's report when "-a" and "-s" options are combined, to
add a column showing which entries belong to a given database.
* modified the clear program to take into account the "E3" extended
capability to clear the terminal's scrollback buffer.
Examples
Along with the library and utilities, many improvements were made to
the [38]ncurses-examples. Some were made to allow building (and
comparison-testing) against NetBSD curses and PDCurses. Both lack some
of the X/Open Curses features, necessitating customization. But this
activity was useful because it showed some remaining performance
issues (which have been resolved in this release).
These changes were made to verify compatibility or compare performance
of ncurses:
* made workarounds for compiling test-programs with NetBSD curses,
though it lacks some common functions such as [39]use_env.
* added dots_termcap test-program
* added dots_curses test-program, for comparison with the low-level
examples.
* added test_setupterm test-proram to demonstrate normal/error
returns from the setupterm and restartterm functions.
* added "-d", "-e" and "-q" options to the demo_terminfo and
demo_termcap test-programs.
* added "-y" option to demo_termcap and test/demo_terminfo
test-programs to demonstrate behavior with/without extended
capabilities.
* modified demo_termcap and demo_terminfo test-programs to make
their options more directly comparable, and add "-i" option to
specify a terminal description filename to parse for names to
lookup.
* rewrote the tests for [40]mvderwin and test for recursive
[41]mvwin in the movewindow test-program.
These changes were made to help with the MinGW port:
* added test-screens to the ncurses test-program to show
256-characters at a time, to help with MinGW port.
* modified the view test-program to load UTF-8 when built with MinGW
by using regular win32 API because the MinGW functions mblen and
mbtowc do not work.
* added "-s" option to the view test-program to allow it to start in
single-step mode, reducing size of trace files when it is used for
debugging MinGW changes.
These changes were made to verify new extensions in ncurses:
* added [42]form_driver_w entrypoint to wide-character forms
library, as well as form_driver_w test-program.
* modified ncurses test-program's b/B tests to display lines only
for the attributes which a given terminal supports, to make room
for an italics test.
* modified ncurses test-program, adding "-E" and "-T" options to
demonstrate use_env versus use_tioctl.
* modified ncurses test-program's c/C tests to cycle through subsets
of the total number of colors, to better illustrate
8/16/88/256-colors by providing directly comparable screens.
* modified the ncurses test-program to also show position reports in
'a' test.
These changes were made to make the examples more useful:
* added scripts for building dpkg and rpm test-packages
* modified the hanoi test-program to show the minimum number of
moves possible for the given number of tiles.
* modified the knight test-program to show the number of choices
possible for each position in automove option, e.g., to allow user
to follow Warnsdorff's rule to solve the puzzle.
Terminal database
This release provides improvements to tic's "-c" checking option,
which was used for example to
* make sgr in several entries agree with other caps.
* correct padding in some entries where earlier versions had
miscounted the number of octal digits.
There are several new terminal descriptions:
* [43]mlterm is now aliased to mlterm3
* [44]nsterm is now derived from nsterm-256color
* [45]putty-sco
* [46]teken is FreeBSD's "xterm" console.
* [47]terminator
* [48]terminology
* [49]tmux is derived from screen.
* several screen.XXX entries support the respective variations for
256 colors.
* [50]simpleterm is now 0.5
* [51]vte is aliased to vte-2012
* [52]vt520ansi
A few entries use extensions (user-defined terminal capabilities):
* E3, used in linux, putty and xterm-basic is tested in the
[53]clear program to erase a terminal's scrollback.
* TS is used in the [54]xterm+sl building block to help deprecate
the misuse of tsl for xterm's title-string.
* XT is used in some terminfo entries to improve usefulness for
other applications than screen, which would like to pretend that
xterm's title is a status-line.
* xm is used in examples [55]xterm-1005 and [56]xterm-1006 to
illustrate a way to make mouse handling more general
A few terminals support italics and/or dim capabilities. In
particular, screen does not. Documented that, and accommodated the
terminals where this feature works with the A_ITALIC extension.
* konsole, mlterm3 (italics)
* nsterm (dim)
* screen (dim)
* vte (dim, italics)
* xterm (dim, italics)
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 [57]NEWS file but treated sketchily in manual pages.
In addition, the mechanism for producing HTML versions of the
documentation has been improved:
* use an improved version of [58]man2html to generate html manpages.
* regenerated [59]NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.html to fix some of the
broken html emitted by docbook.
Interesting bug-fixes
* Ada95 binding:
+ modify makefile rules to ensure that the PIC option is not
used when building a static library
+ make Ada95 build-fix for big-endian architectures such as
sparc. This undoes one of the fixes from [60]20110319, which
added an "Unused" member to representation clauses, replacing
that with pragmas to suppress warnings about unused bits.
* Color and attributes:
+ parenthesize parameter of COLOR_PAIR and PAIR_NUMBER in
curses.h in case it happens to be a comma-expression.
+ improve [61]20021221 workaround for broken acs, handling a
case where that ACS_xxx character is not in the acsc string
but there is a known wide-character which can be used.
+ modify [62]init_pair to accept -1's for color value after
[63]assume_default_colors has been called.
+ add a check in [64]start_color to limit color-pairs to 256
when extended colors are not supported.
* Resizing the screen:
+ propagate error-returns from wresize, i.e., the internal
increase_size and decrease_size functions through
[65]resize_term.
+ add check for zero/negative dimensions for resizeterm and
resize_term.
+ modify resizeterm to always push a KEY_RESIZE onto the fifo,
even if screensize is unchanged. Modify library to push a
KEY_RESIZE if there was a SIGWINCH, even if it does not call
resizeterm). These changes eliminate the case where a
SIGWINCH is received, but ERR is returned from wgetch or
wgetnstr because the screen dimensions did not change.
* Low-level interfaces
+ fix an old bug in the termcap emulation; "%i" was ignored in
tparm because the parameters to be incremented were already
on the internal stack.
+ change "%l" behavior in tparm to push the string length onto
the stack rather than saving the formatted length into the
output buffer.
+ modify name-comparison for tgetstr, etc., to accommodate
legacy applications as well as to improve compatbility with
BSD 4.2 termcap implementations (see note for [66]980725).
* High-level interfaces
+ modify internal recursion in wgetch which handles cooked mode
to check if the call to wgetnstr returned an error. This can
happen when both nocbreak and nodelay are set, for instance
(see note for [67]960418).
+ add a check in internal function waddch_nosync to ensure that
tab characters are treated as control characters; some broken
locales claim they are printable.
+ modify menu library to ensure that a menu's top-row is
adjusted as needed to ensure that the current item is on the
screen
+ fix special case where double-width character overwrites a
single- width character in the first column.
Configuration changes
Major changes
The ncurses 6.0 configure script makes changes to the default value of
several configure options, depending on the --with-abi-version option
(i.e., whether its value is "5" or "6"):
--enable-const
Feature introduced in [68]970405 supports the use of const
where X/Open Curses should have, but did not. NetBSD curses
does something similar with const.
--enable-ext-colors
Extends the cchar_t structure to allow more than 16 colors to
be encoded. This applies only to the wide-character
(--enable-widec) configuration.
--enable-ext-mouse
Modifies the encoding of mouse state to make room for a 5th
mouse button. That allows one to use ncurses with a wheel mouse
with xterm or similar X terminal emulators.
--enable-ext-putwin
Modifies the file-format written by putwin to use printable
text rather than binary files, allowing getwin to read screen
dumps written by differently-configured ncurses libraries. The
extended getwin can still read binary screen dumps from the
same configuration of ncurses. This does not change the ABI
(the binary interface seen by calling applications).
--enable-interop
Modifies the FIELDTYPE structure used for the form library to
make it more generic.
--enable-lp64
Allows an application to define _LP64 to declare chtype and
mmask_t as simply "unsigned" rather than the configured types
using the --with-chtype and --with-mmask_t options.
--enable-sp-funcs
Compile-in support for extended functions which accept a SCREEN
pointer, reducing the need for juggling the global SP value
with [69]set_term and [70]delscreen.
--with-chtype=uint32_t
Makes chtype explicitly a 32-bit unsigned value.
--with-mmask_t=uint32_t
Makes mmask_t explicitly a 32-bit unsigned value.
--with-tparm-arg=intptr_t
X/Open Curses declares [71]tparm using long for each of the
parameters aside from the formatting string, presuming that
long and char* are the same size. This configure option uses
intptr_t which provides a better guarantee of the sizes.
The configure script no longer checks for antique compilers; c89 is
assumed as a minimum. There are a few features from later revisions
which are used when available. The configure script makes checks to
turn on useful warnings from clang, gcc and icc. You should be able to
build ncurses 6.0 with any of the current (or not so current) C
compilers available in 2015.
The configure script, by the way, makes changes which do not work with
systems whose /bin/sh is non-POSIX. This mainly affects Solaris (the
other vendor unix systems have followed the POSIX guidelines for the
past twenty years). If you must build on Solaris, its [72]xpg4
binaries suffice, e.g.,
#!/bin/sh
WHAT=`hostname|sed -e 's/\..*//'`
OUT=configure.out
cat >>$OUT <<EOF/
** `date`
** node: $WHAT
** user: `id`
** conf: $*
EOF/
SHELL=/bin/sh
if test -f /usr/xpg4/bin/sh
then
CONFIG_SHELL=/usr/xpg4/bin/sh
export CONFIG_SHELL
SHELL=$CONFIG_SHELL
fi
rm -f config.status config.cache
TOP=$HOME/$WHAT
$SHELL ./configure --verbose \
--disable-echo \
--disable-overwrite \
--enable-warnings \
--with-warnings \
--prefix=$TOP $* 2>&1 | tee -a $OUT
Other major changes to the configure script include:
* ABI 6 is now the default, intending that the existing ABI 5 should
build as before using the "--with-abi-version=5" option.
* added --with-extra-suffix option to help with installing
nonconflicting ncurses6 packages, e.g., avoiding header- and
library-conflicts.
NOTE: as a side-effect, this renames
adacurses-config to adacurses5-config and
adacursesw-config to adacursesw5-config
* the configure script looks for gnatgcc if the Ada95 binding is
built, in preference to the default gcc/cc. The script also
ensures that the Ada95 binding is built with the level of
optimization as the C libraries.
* the configure script captures define's related to -D_XOPEN_SOURCE
from the configure check and adds those to the *-config and *.pc
files, to simplify use for the wide-character libraries.
Interface changes
* turn on _XOPEN_CURSES definition in curses.h.
* change _nc_has_mouse to has_mouse, reflect its use in C++ and Ada95.
* add is_pad and is_subwin functions for opaque access to the WINDOW structure.
* add tiparm, based on review of X/Open Curses Issue 7.
Library Improvements
* add a terminal driver for Windows console, which supports a MinGW port to
Windows.
* add extended functions which specify the SCREEN pointer for several curses
functions which use the global SP.
* improve the NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS feature by adding a check for an extended
terminfo capability U8.
* improve performance of tigetstr, etc., by using hashing code from tic.
* add WACS_xxx definitions to wide-character configuration for thick- and
double-lines.
* modify init_pair to allow caller to create extra color pairs beyond the
color_pairs limit, which use default colors.
Improvements to Programs
* add tabs program.
* modify tic's -I/-C dump to reformat acsc strings into canonical form (sorted,
unique mapping).
* add checks in tic for inconsistent cursor-movement controls, and for
inconsistent printer-controls.
* add special case to _nc_infotocap (used by tic and infocmp) to recognize the
setaf/setab strings from xterm+256color and xterm+88color, and provide a
reduced version which works with termcap.
paths in include directives in the headers it installs. (I'm not going
to ask who thought this was a good idea...) Since this package
bypasses the ncurses install goo, we need to replicate at least some
of the behavior with SUBST in order to get working header files out.
Should fix PR 43435 and may also fix some problems with ncursesw and
tin that I've had reported to me.
PKGREVISION -> 4.
not only with the different directory structure under Mac OS X (due to
the case-insensitive file-system) but also with the files which don't
get installed under Solaris. Bump the package revision of the "ncurses"
package as the binary package changed under Mac OS X.
This fixes PR pkg/43446 by Edgar Fuss.
This changes the buildlink3.mk files to use an include guard for the
recursive include. The use of BUILDLINK_DEPTH, BUILDLINK_DEPENDS,
BUILDLINK_PACKAGES and BUILDLINK_ORDER is handled by a single new
variable BUILDLINK_TREE. Each buildlink3.mk file adds a pair of
enter/exit marker, which can be used to reconstruct the tree and
to determine first level includes. Avoiding := for large variables
(BUILDLINK_ORDER) speeds up parse time as += has linear complexity.
The include guard reduces system time by avoiding reading files over and
over again. For complex packages this reduces both %user and %sys time to
half of the former time.
New features and improvements:
* library
o new flavor of the ncurses library provides rudimentary
support for POSIX threads. Several functions are reentrant,
but most require either a window-level or screen-level
mutex.
(This is API-compatible, but not ABI-compatible with
the normal library).
o add NCURSES_OPAQUE symbol to curses.h, will use to make
structs opaque in selected configurations.
o add NCURSES_EXT_FUNCS and NCURSES_EXT_COLORS symbols
to curses.h to make it simpler to tell if the extended
functions and/or colors are declared.
o add wresize to C++ binding
o eliminate fixed-buffer vsprintf calls in C++ binding.
o add several functions to C++ binding which wrap C
functions that pass a WINDOW* parameter.
o adapt mouse-handling code from menu library in form-library
o improve tracing for form library, showing created forms, fields, etc.
o make $NCURSES_NO_PADDING feature work for termcap interface .
o add check to trace-file open, if the given name is a
directory, add ".log" to the name and try again.
o several new manpages: curs_legacy.3x, curs_memleaks.3x,
curs_opaque.3x and curs_threads.3x
* programs:
o modified three test-programs to demonstrate the threading
support in this version: ditto, rain, worm.
o several new test-programs: demo_panels, dots_mvcur,
inch_wide, inchs, key_name, key_names, savescreen,
savescreen.sh test_arrays, test_get_wstr, test_getstr,
test_instr, test_inwstr and test_opaque.
o add adacurses-config to the Ada95 install.
o modify tic -f option to format spaces as \s to prevent
them from being lost when that is read back in unformatted
strings.
o The tack program is now distributed separately from
ncurses.
* terminal database
o added entries:
+ Eterm-256color, Eterm-88color and rxvt-88color
+ aterm
+ konsole-256color
+ mrxvt
+ screen.mlterm
+ screen.rxvt
+ teraterm4.59 is now the primary primary teraterm
entry, renamed original to teraterm2.3
+ 9term terminal
+ Newbury Data entries
o updated/improved entries:
+ gnome to version 2.22.3
+ h19, z100
+ konsole to version 1.6.6
+ mlterm, mlterm+pcfkeys
+ xterm, and building-blocks for function-keys to
xterm patch #230.
Major bug fixes:
* add logic to tic for cancelling strings in user-defined
capabilities (this is needed for current konsole terminfo
entry).
* modify mk-1st.awk so the generated makefile rules for linking
or installing shared libraries do not first remove the library,
in case it is in use, e.g., libncurses.so by /bin/sh.
* correct check for notimeout in wgetch.
* fix a sign-extension bug in infocmp's repair_acsc function.
* change winnstr to stop at the end of the line.
* make Ada95 demo_panels example work.
* fix for adding a non-spacing character at the beginning of a line.
* fill in extended-color pair to make colors work for
wide-characters using extended-colors.
* improve refresh of window on top of multi-column characters,
taking into account split characters on left/right window
boundaries.
* modify win_wchnstr to ensure that only a base cell is returned
for each multi-column character.
* improve waddch and winsch handling of EILSEQ from mbrtowc by
using unctrl to display illegal bytes rather than trying to
append further bytes to make up a valid sequence.
* restore curs_set state after endwin/refresh
* modify keyname to use "^X" form only if meta has been called,
or if keyname is called without initializing curses, e.g., via
initscr or newterm.
* modify unctrl to check codes in 128-255 range versus isprint.
If they are not printable, and locale was set, use a "M-" or
"~" sequence.
* improve resizeterm by moving ripped-off lines, and repainting
the soft-keys.
* modify form library to accept control characters such as
newline in set_field_buffer, which is compatible with Solaris.
* use NCURSES_MOUSE_MASK in definition of BUTTON_RELEASE, etc.,
to make those work properly with the --enable-ext-mouse
configuration
* correct some functions in Ada95 binding which were using
return value from C where none was returned.
* reviewed/fixed issues reported by Coverity and Klocwork tools.
Portability:
* configure script:
o new options:
--disable-big-strings
control whether static string tables are generated
as single large strings (to improve startup
performance), or as array of individual strings.
--disable-relink
control whether shared libraries are relinked
(during install) when rpath is enabled.
--disable-tic-depends
make explicit whether tic library depends on
ncurses/ncursesw library.
--enable-mixed-case
override the configure script's check if the
filesystem supports mixed-case filenames. This
allows one to control how the terminal database
maps to the filesystem. For filesystems that do
not support mixed-case, the library uses generate
2-character (hexadecimal) codes for the lower-level
of the filesystem terminfo database
--enable-reentrant
builds a different flavor of the ncurses library
(ncursest) which improves reentrant use of the
library by reducing global and static variables
(see the "--with-pthread" option for the threaded
support).
--enable-weak-symbols
use weak-symbols for linking to the POSIX thread
library, and use the same soname for the ncurses
shared library as the normal library (caveat: the
ABI is for the threaded library, which makes global
data accessed via functions).
--with-pthread
build with the POSIX thread library (tested with
AIX, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, HPUX, IRIX64,
Solaris, Tru64).
--with-ticlib
build/install the tic-support functions in a separate
library
o improved options:
--enable-ext-colors
requires the wide-character configuration.
--with-chtype
ignore option value "unsigned" is always added to
the type in curses.h; do the same for --with-mmask-t.
--with-dmalloc
build-fix for redefinition of strndup.
--with-hashed-db
+ accepts a parameter which is the install-prefix
of a given Berkeley Database.
+ the $LIBS environment variable overrides the
search for the db library.
--without-hashed-db
assumed when "--disable-database" is used.
* other configure/build issues:
o build-fixes for LynxOS
o modify shared-library rules to allow FreeBSD 3.x to use rpath.
o build-fix for FreeBSD "contemporary" TTY interface.
o build-fixes for AIX with libtool.
o build-fixes for Darwin and libtool.
o modify BeOS-specific ifdef's to build on Haiku.
o corrected gcc options for building shared libraries on
Solaris and IRIX64.
o change shared-library configuration for OpenBSD, make rpath work.
o build-fixes for using libutf8, e.g., on OpenBSD 3.7
o add "-e" option in ncurses/Makefile.in when generating
source-files to force earlier exit if the build environment
fails unexpectedly.
o add support for shared libraries for QNX.
o change delimiter in MKlib_gen.sh from '%' to '@', to
avoid substitution by IBM xlc to '#' as part of its
extensions to digraphs.
* library:
o rewrite wrapper for wcrtomb, making it work on Solaris.
This is used in the form library to determine the length
of the buffer needed by field_buffer.
o add/use configure script macro CF_SIG_ATOMIC_T, use
the corresponding type for data manipulated by signal
handlers.
o set locale in misc/ncurses-config.in since it uses a
range
o disable GPM mouse support when $TERM does not happen
to contain "linux", since Gpm_Open no longer limits its
assertion to terminals that it might handle, e.g., within
"screen" in xterm.
o reset mouse file-descriptor when unloading GPM library.
* test programs:
o update test programs to build/work with various UNIX
curses for comparisons.
Bump revisions of both ncurses and ncursesw packages.
fixes based on Coverity report:
------------------------------
- remove dead code in test/bs.c
- remove dead code in test/demo_defkey.c
- remove an unused assignment in progs/infocmp.c
- fix a limit check in tack/ansi.c tools_charset()
- fix tack/ansi.c tools_status() to perform the VT320/VT420
tests in request_cfss(). The function had exited too soon.
- fix a memory leak in tic.c's make_namelist()
- fix a couple of places in tack/output.c which did not check for
EOF.
- fix a loop-condition in test/bs.c
- add index checks in lib_color.c for color palettes
- add index checks in progs/dump_entry.c for version_filter()
handling of V_BSD case.
- fix a possible null-pointer dereference in copywin()
- fix a possible null-pointer dereference in waddchnstr()
- add a null-pointer check in _nc_expand_try()
- add a null-pointer check in tic.c's make_namelist()
- add a null-pointer check in _nc_expand_try()
- add null-pointer checks in test/cardfile.c
- fix a double-free in ncurses/tinfo/trim_sgr0.c
- fix a double-free in ncurses/base/wresize.c
- add try/catch block to c++/cursesmain.cc
other fixes prompted by inspection for Coverity report:
------------------------------------------------------
- modify ifdef's for c++ binding to use try/catch/throw statements
- add a null-pointer check in tack/ansi.c request_cfss()
- fix a memory leak in ncurses/base/wresize.c
- corrected check for valid memu/meml capabilities in
progs/dump_entry.c when handling V_HPUX case.
destination paths so that DESTDIR installations work.
I'm not bumping the revision because the resultant binaries should not
be different; please let me know if I should've bumped it.
