# Announcing ncurses 1.9.4

## Overview of ncurses 1.9.4

The ncurses library is a freeware emulation of System V Release 4.0 curses. It uses terminfo format, supports color and multiple highlights and forms characters, and function-key mapping, and has all the other SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD curses.

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 Linux. It should port easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX.

The distribution includes the library and support utilities, including a terminfo compiler tic(1), a decompiler infocmp(1), clear(1), tput(1), and a termcap conversion tool captoinfo(1). Full manual pages are provided for the library and tools.

The ncurses distribution is available at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/zm/zmbenhal/ncurses. It is also carried on the GNU distribution site at ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu.

# Features of ncurses

- All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are documented).

- Full support for SVr4 curses features including keyboard mapping, color, forms-drawing with ACS characters, and automatic recognition of keypad and function keys.

- Unlike SVr4 curses, ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost corner of the screen if your terminal has an insert-character capability.

- 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, but not all EXTENDED features). Most EXTENDED-level features not directly concerned with wide-character support are implemented, including many function calls not supported under SVr4 curses (but portability of all calls is documented so you can use the SVr4 subset only).

- 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.

- An emulation of the System V Release 4 panels library, supporting a stack of windows with backing store, is included.

- An emulation of the System V Release 4 menus library, supporting a uniform but flexible interface for menu programming, is included.

- (PC-clone boxes only) Support for access to the IBM PC ROM characters through a new highlight, A_PCCHARSET.

- Automatic fallback to the /etc/termcap file can be compiled in for systems withould 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.

- An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document.

# State of the Package

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.

The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of games and utilities, including:

lynx-2.4
  the character-screen WWW browser
bs-2.0
  Battleships game with proper visual interface
greed-3.1
  the game of Greed
nolan-1.1
  the World's Smallest Political Quiz
vh-1.6
  Volks-Hypertext browser for the Jargon File
blue
  Blue Moon solitare game
u386mon
  System performance monitor for SVr4
nvi
  New vi alpha version 1.1.34

The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs.

## Who's Who and What's What

The primary maintainer of ncurses is Zeyd Ben-Halim. Unfortunately, he can only work on the package part time. As a result, since 1.8.1, much of the enhancement work and all the documentation has been done by Eric S. Raymond. However, requests for beta releases and other queries should properly be directed to Zeyd.

There is an ncurses mailing list. It is a majordomo list; to join, write to `listserv@netcom.com` with a message containing the line

                 subscribe ncurses-list @

This list is open to anyone interested in helping with the development and testing of this package.

## Future Plans

- Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization support.

- Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.

We need people to help with these projects. If you are interested in working on them, please join the ncurses list.

## The terminfo/termcap database

This distribution now includes (and uses) a copy of the master terminfo database maintained by Eric Raymond. This database (which is the official descendant of the 4.4BSD termcap file) changes faster than this code does, so you probably want to pick up new copies occasionally.

You can download either the termcap or terminfo versions of the terminal-type database from Eric's ncurses resource page, http://www.ccil.org/~esr/ncurses.html.