Updated: ncurses/-demo libncurses/-devel/++/w10 terminfo/-extra 6.3-1.20220416
Cygwin ncurses Maintainer
Brian.Inglis@SystematicSW.ab.ca
Sat Nov 19 04:34:16 GMT 2022
The following packages have been upgraded in the Cygwin distribution:
* ncurses 6.3-1.20220416
* ncurses-demo 6.3-1.20220416
* ncurses-debuginfo 6.3-1.20220416
* libncurses-devel 6.3-1.20220416
* libncurses++w10 6.3-1.20220416
* libncursesw10 6.3-1.20220416
* terminfo 6.3-1.20220416
* terminfo-extra 6.3-1.20220416
The ncurses (new curses) library is an emulation of Sys V R 4
curses, and more. It uses terminfo format, supports pads, color,
multiple highlights, forms characters, function key mapping,
and has all the other SVR4 curses enhancements over BSD curses.
For more information see the project home page:
https://invisible-island.net/ncurses
As there are multiple components and many changes each release please
see below or read /usr/share/doc/ncurses/ANNOUNCE after installation:
https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/announce.html
20220416
* add a limit-check to guard against corrupt terminfo data
* add check/warning in configure script if option --with-xterm-kbs is
missing or inconsistent
* add setlocale call to several test-programs.
* allow extended-color number in opts parameter of wattr_on.
20220409
* add test/test_unget_wch.c
20220402
* amend extended_captype(), returning CANCEL if a string is explicitly
cancelled.
* make description-fields distinct
20220326
* update teken
* add teken-16color, teken-vt and teken-sc
* add a few missing details for vte-2018
20220319
* add xgterm
* correct setal in mintty/tmux entries, add to vte-2018
* add blink to vte-2018
* improve tic warning about XT versus redundant tsl, etc.
20220312
* add xterm+acs building-block
* add xterm-p370, for use in older terminals
* add dec+sl to xterm-new, per xterm patch
* add mosh and mosh-256color
20220305
* replace obsolescent "-gnatg" option with "-gnatwa" and "-gnatyg", to
work around build problems with gnat 12.
* update external links in Ada95.html
* trim unused return-value from canonical_name().
20220226
* fix issues found with coverity:
- rewrite canonical_name() function of infocmp to ensure buffer size
- corrected use of original tty-modes in tput init/reset subcommands
- modify tabs program to limit tab-stop values to max-columns
- add limit-checks for palette rgb values in test/ncurses.c
* add a few null-pointer checks to help with static-analysis.
* enforce limit on number of soft-keys used in c++ binding.
* adjust a buffer-limit in write_entry.c to quiet a bogus warning from
gcc 12.0.1
20220219
* expanded description in man/resizeterm.3x
* additional workaround for ImageMagick in test/picsmap.c
20220212
* improve font-formatting in other manpages, for consistency.
* correct/improve font-formatting in curs_wgetch.3x
20220205
* 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.
* improve use of "trap" in shell scripts, using "fixup-trap".
20220129
* minor updates for test-packages
* 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
* update kitty
20220122
* add ABI 7 defaults to configure script.
* add warning in configure script if file specified for "--with-caps"
does not exist.
* use fix for CF_FIX_WARNINGS from cdk-perl, ignoring error-exit on
format-warnings.
* improve readability of long parameterized expressions with the infocmp
"-f" option by allowing split before a "%p" marker.
20220115
* improve checks for valid mouse events when an intermediate mouse state
is not part of the mousemask specified by the caller
* use newer version 1.36 of gnathtml for generating Ada html files.
20220101
* add section on releasing memory to curs_termcap.3x and
curs_terminfo.3x manpages.
20211225
* improve markup, e.g., for external manpage links in the manpages
20211219
* install ncurses-examples programs in libexecdir, adding a wrapper
script to invoke those.
* add help-screen and screen-dump to test/combine.c
20211211
* add test/combine.c, to demo/test combining characters.
20211204
* improve configure check for getttynam
20211127
* fix errata in description fields
* add x10term+sl, aixterm+sl, ncr260vp+sl, ncr260vp+vt, wyse+sl
20211120
* add dim, ecma+strikeout to st-0.6
* deallocate the tparm cache when del_curterm is called for the last
allocated TERMINAL structure
* modify test-package to more closely conform to Debian multi-arch.
* if the --with-pkg-config-libdir option is not given, use
${libdir}/pkgconfig as a default
20211115
* fix memory-leak in delwin for pads
20211113
* minor clarification to clear.1
* add xterm+sl-alt, use that in foot+base
* improve search-path check for pkg-config, for Debian testing which
installs pkg-config with architecture-prefixes.
20211106
* improve check in misc/Makefile.in for empty $PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR
* 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
* fix a memory-leak in del_curterm
20211030
* simplify some references to WINDOWS._flags using macros.
* add a "check" rule in Ada95 makefile, to help with test-packages.
* build-fix for cross-compiling to MingW, conditionally add -lssp
20211026
* corrected regex needed for older pkg-config used in Solaris 10.
* amend configure option's auto-search to account for systems where none
of the directories known to pkg-config exist, adapted from
mailing-list comment
ncurses 6.3, released October 21, 2021.
Library improvements
New features
There are a few new features:
* A new (experimental) driver, for the Windows Terminal
configuration is provided.
* A script is provided which enables OpenBSD users to upgrade their
system to use ncurses 6.3 (OpenBSD developers are also invited to
do this).
Additionally, to improve performance other changes (and extensions)
are provided in this release:
* modify lib_mouse.c to check for out-of-range button numbers,
convert those to position reports.
* add sp-funcs for erasewchar, killwchar.
Other improvements
These are revised features:
* modify wgetnstr, wgetn_wstr to improve compatibility with SVr4
curses in its treatment of interrupt and quit characters
These were done to limit or ultimately deprecate features:
* mark wgetch-events feature as deprecated.
* prevent KEY_EVENT from appearing in curses.h unless the
configure option --enable-wgetch-events is used.
* modify MKkey_defs.sh to hide ncurses' definition of
KEY_EVENTS to reduce Visual Studio C++ redefinition warnings.
* reduce build-warnings by excluding ncurses-internals from
deprecation warnings.
These are improvements to existing features:
* drop symbols GCC_PRINTF and GCC_SCANF from <curses.h>, to simplify
use.
* apply gcc format attribute to prototypes which use a va_list
parameter rather than a "..." variable-length parameter list.
* modify <term.h> so that it is not necessary to include <curses.h>
before <term.h>.
* provide for wide-characters as background character in wbkgrnd
* improve parameter-checking for tparm, adding function _nc_tiparm()
to handle the most-used case, which accepts only numeric
parameters.
* use return-value from vsnprintf to reallocate as needed to allow
for buffers larger than the screen size.
* add another fflush(stdout) in _nc_flush to handle time-delays in
the middle of strings such as flash when the application uses
low-level calls rather than curses.
These are corrections to existing features:
* add a check to guard against repeat_char emitting digits which
could be interpreted as BSD-style padding when --enable-bsdpad is
configured.
* check for screen size-change in scr_init and scr_restore, in case
a screen dump does not match the current screen dimensions
Program improvements
Several improvements were made to the utility programs:
tabs
* implement "+m" option
tic
* add check for duplicate "use=" clauses.
* add check to report instances where tparm would detect an
error in an expression.
* add user-defined capabilities from mintty to Caps-ncurses,
for checking consistency.
* improve warning when oc/op do not mention SGR 39/49 for xterm
compatible XT flag.
* improve checks for number of parameters of smglp, smgrp,
smgtp, and smgbp.
* improve "-c" option to validate the number and type of
parameters and compare against expected number/type before
deciding which set of parameter-lists to use in tparm calls.
* improve check for errors detected in tparm.
* improve format of output, to ensure that the messages contain
only printable text.
* modify to eliminate unnecessary "\" to escape ":" in terminfo
format.
* remove check that assumes that none or both parameterized and
non-parameterized margin-setting capabilities are present.
toe
* modify output of "toe -as" to show first description found
rather than the last.
* add a check to ensure that a "termcap file" is text rather
than binary.
tput
* modify to allow multiple commands per line.
* improve parameter-checking by analyzing all extended string
capabilities, e.g., as used in the Cs and Ms capabilities of
the tmux description.
* make warning messages consistently using alias names when
those are used, rather than the underlying program's name.
* improve usage message for aliases such as clear, by
eliminating tput-specific portions.
* modify initialization to avoid opening /dev/tty for cases
other than reset/init, e.g., for clear.
Examples
Along with the library and utilities, improvements were made to the
ncurses-examples. Most of this activity aimed at improving the
test-packages. A few changes are more generally useful, e.g., for the
main ncurses test-program, and for analyzing traces using the
tracemunch script:
* add "-r" option to the dots test-programs, to help with scripting
a performance comparison.
* build-fix for test_opaque, for configurations without opaque
curses structs, e.g., ncurses 5.7.
* improve tracemunch logic for "RUN" compaction.
* improve tracemunch's coverage of form/menu/panel libraries.
* improve tracemunch's checking/reporting the type for the first
parameter, e.g., "WINDOW*" rather than "#1".
* modify tracemunch and the panel library to show readable traces
for panel- and user-pointers.
There are other new demo/test programs and reusable examples:
back_ground
to exercise the wide-character background functions.
move_field
to demonstrate move_field, and a stub for a corresponding demo
of dup_field.
test_tparm
for checking tparm changes.
Terminal database
There are several new terminal descriptions:
absolute, att610+cvis, foot, foot-direct, hp98550-color,
hpterm-color2, hterm, hterm-256color, linux-s, putty+keypad,
putty+screen, putty-screen, screen.linux-s, scrt/securecrt,
tmux-direct, vt220+cvis, vt220+cvis8, vt220+pcedit, vt220+vtedit,
vt220-base, vt52+keypad, xterm+256color2, xterm+88color2,
xterm-direct16, xterm-direct256, xterm+nofkeys, and
xterm+nopcfkeys.
There are many changes to existing terminal descriptions. Some were
updates to several descriptions:
* correct use-ordering in some xterm-direct flavors
* fix some sgr inconsistencies in d230c, ibm6153, ibm6154,
ncrvt100an
* improve vt50h and vt52 based on DECScope manual
* use hp+arrows in a few places
* use hp+pfk-cr in a few places
* use vt220+cvis in st, terminology, termite since they ignore
blinking-cursor detail in att610+cvis
while others affected specific descriptions. These were retested, to
take into account changes by their developers:
kitty+common, mlterm3, ms-terminal
while these are specific fixes based on reviewing documentation, user
reports, or warnings from tic:
aaa+dec, aaa+rv
correct rmacs/smacs
aaa+rv
correct sgr
icl6404
correct csr
kitty
use att610+cvis, xterm+tmux and ansi+enq
konsole-base
re-enable "bel"
linux2.6
fix pound-sign mapping in acsc
linux3.0
modify to reflect default mapping of shift-tab by kbd 1.14
pccons
fill in some missing pieces, to make it comparable to the vt220
entry
putty
use vt100+fnkeys, add rep
screen
use vt100+enq
terminator
corrected tsl capability
ti916
correct cup
tmux
change kbs to ^?
vt220
use vt220+cvis
vt420+lrmm
add smglp and smgrp
vt420
use vt420+lrmm
xterm-new
add nel
xterm-vt52
use vt52+keypad
A few entries use extensions (user-defined terminal capabilities):
* add shifted Linux console keys in linux+sfkeys entry for
screen.linux
* add Smulx to alacritty
* add kbeg to xterm+keypad to accommodate termcap applications
* add extensions in xterm+tmux and ecma+strikeout to ms-terminal,
but cancel the non-working Cr and Ms capabilities
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:
* make opts extension for getcchar work as documented for
ncurses 6.1, adding "-g" flag to demo_new_pair to illustrate.
* modify tset "-q" option to refrain from modifying terminal
modes, to match the documentation.
* New/improved history and portability sections:
* improve documentation for tparm and static/dynamic variables.
* add history note to curs_scanw.3x for <stdarg.h> and
<varargs.h>
* add history note to curs_printw.3x for <stdarg.h> and
<varargs.h>
* add portability note to ncurses.3x regarding <stdarg.h>
* add historical notes to tput, curses-terminfo and
curses-color manpages based on source-code for SVr2, SVr3 and
SVr4.
* improve history section for tset manpage based on the 1BSD
tarball, which preceded BSD's SCCS checkins by more than
three years.
* Other improvements:
* explain in ncurses.3x that functions in the tinfo library do
not rely upon wide-characters.
* improve manual page for panel library, extending the
portability section as well as documenting error-returns.
* add section on margins to terminfo.5, adapted from X/Open
Curses.
* improve man/term.5 section on legacy storage format.
* add a note in terminfo.5 explaining that no-parameter strings
such as sgr0 or cnorm should not be used with tparm.
* improve description of BSD-style padding in curs_termcap.3x
* improve discussion of padding versus tparm and tputs in
man/curs_terminfo.3x
* add a note in manual page to explain ungetch vs unget_wch.
* improve description of error-returns in waddch and waddnstr
manual pages.
There are no new manual pages (all of the manual page updates are to
existing pages).
Some of the improvements are more subtle, relating to the way the
information is presented. For instance, hyphenation is suppressed in
the HTML files generated from manual pages because an upgrade to groff
gave noticeably poorer results, interfering with the process of
creating links between the resulting webpages.
Interesting bug-fixes
While there were many bugs fixed during development of ncurses 6.3,
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:
* modify wbkgd and wbkgrnd to avoid storing a null in the background
character, because it may be used in cases where the corresponding
0x80 is not treated as a null.
This was a regression introduced in ncurses 6.2 (reported on the
mailing list), for which the workaround was to specify a blank for
the background character.
* remove output-related checks for nl/nonl (also reported on the
mailing list).
* improve tparm implementation of %P and %g, more closely matching
SVr4 terminfo. Those denote static and dynamic variables in
terminfo expressions.
Exactly what those terms meant was never documented before in any
implementation of curses, aside from source code. Unlike the other
two fixes, the problem was discovered while studying OpenBSD's
version of tset.
Configuration changes
Major changes
There are no major changes. Several new options were added to ease
integration of packages with systems using different versions of GNAT
and ncurses. Also, improvements were made to configure checks.
Configuration options
There are a few new/modified configure options:
--enable-fvisibility
new configure option and check for gcc -fvisibility=hidden
feature
--enable-leaks
corrected to allow turning leak-checking off later in a set of
options.
--enable-stdnoreturn
new configure option makes the _Noreturn keyword optional to
ease transition.
--disable-pkg-ldflags
revised option also controls whether $LDFLAGS from the build is
provided in "-config" and ".pc" files.
--disable-root-access
add configure option which tells ncurses to disallow most
file-opens by setuid processes.
--disable-wattr-macros
changed default to help packagers who reuse wide ncursesw
header file with non-wide ncurses library.
--with-pkg-config-libdir
revised option uses the actual search path from pkg-config or
pkgconf using the output from --debug.
--with-ada-libname
--with-form-libname
--with-menu-libname
--with-panel-libname
new several --with-xxx-libname options, to help with pkgsrc
Portability
Many of the portability changes are implemented via the configure
script:
* add a special case in the configure script to work around one of
the build-time breakages reported for OpenBSD 6 here:
https://www.mail-archive.com/bugs@openbsd.org/msg13200.html
* modify configure check for libtool to prevent accidental use of an
OpenBSD program which uses the same name.
* modify configuration checks for build-time tic/infocmp to use
AC_CHECK_TOOL. That can still be overridden by --with-tic-path and
--with-infocmp-path when fallbacks are used, but even if not using
fallbacks, the improved check may help with cross-compiling.
* relax modification-time comparison in CF_LINK_FUNCS to allow it to
accept link() function with NFS filesystems which change the mtime
on the link target, e.g., several BSD systems.
* modify configure check for c89/c99 aliases of clang to use its
-std option instead, because some platforms, in particular macOS,
do not provide workable c89/c99 aliases.
* modify CF_NCURSES_CONFIG to work around Xcode's c99 "-W" option,
which conflicts with conventional use for passing linker options.
* modify configure scripts to filter out redefinitions of
_XOPEN_SOURCE, e.g., for NetBSD which generally supports 500, but
600 is needed for ncursesw.
Here are some of the other portability fixes:
* change configure-check and source-code for gcc's noreturn
attribute to assume it is a prefix rather than suffix, matching
c11's _Noreturn convention.
* modify mk-1st.awk to account for extra-suffix configure option.
* build-fix for termsort module when configured with termcap.
* modify configure script and makefiles to support ".PHONY" make
program feature.
* amend libtool configuration to add dependency for install.tic,
etc., in ncurses/Makefile on the lower-level libraries.
* modify Ada95 source-generation utility to write to a file given as
parameter rather than to the standard output, allowing builds with
MinGW.
* amend tic/infocmp check to allow for the respective tool's
absence.
* build-fixes for gnat 10.1.1, whose gnatmake drops integration with
gprbuild.
* correct configure version-check/warning for g++ to allow for 10.x
ncurses 6.2, released February 12, 2020.
Library improvements
New features
There are several new features:
* O_EDGE_INSERT_STAY tells the form library to optionally delay
cursor movement on a field edge/boundary
* O_INPUT_FIELD extension to form library allows a dynamic field to
shrink if the new limit is smaller than the current field size.
* added exit_curses and exit_terminfo to replace internal symbols
for leak-checking.
* added curses_trace, to replace trace().
Additionally, to improve performance other changes (and extensions)
are provided in this release:
* mouse decoding now handles shift/control/alt logic when decoding
xterm's 1006 mode
* ncurses now defines a limit for wgetnstr, wgetn_wstr when length
is negative or "too large".
* reordered loop-limit checks in winsnstr in case the string has no
terminating null and only the number of characters is used.
* there is now no buffer-size limit when reading the $TERMCAP
variable.
* the $TERMCAP variable may be interpreted as a fallback to a
terminfo entry
* mvcur now decides whether to use hard-tabs, using xt, tbc and hts
as clues.
* extended colors are improved by modifying an internal call to
vid_puts to pass extended color pairs e.g., from tty_update.c and
lib_mvcur.c
* the initialization functions now avoid relying upon persistent
data for the result from getenv
* scrolling is improved:
* a limit check in newline_forces_scroll handles the case where
the row is inside scroll-margins, but not at the end.
* improved loop limits in _nc_scroll_window handle a case where
the scrolled data is a pad which is taller than the window.
Other improvements
These are revised features:
* used "const" in some prototypes rather than NCURSES_CONST where
X/Open Curses was updated to do this, e.g., wscanw, newterm, the
terminfo interface. Also use "const" for consistency in the
termcap interface, which was withdrawn by X/Open Curses in Issue 5
(2007). As of Issue 7, X/Open Curses still lacks "const" for
certain return values, e.g., keyname.
* modified wbkgd and wbkgrnd to improve compatibility with SVr4
curses, changing the way the window rendition is updated when the
background character is modified
* improved terminfo write/read by modifying the fourth item of the
extended header to denote the number of valid strings in the
extended string table (see term(5)).
* modified the initialization checks for mouse so that the
xterm+sm+1006 block will work with terminal descriptions not
mentioning xterm.
These were done to limit or ultimately deprecate features:
* deprecated safe-sprintf, since the vsnprintf function, which does
what was needed, was standardized long ago.
* marked vwprintw and vwscanw as deprecated; recommend using
vw_printw and vw_scanw, respectively.
* added deprecation warnings for internal functions called by older
versions of tack.
* removed unused _nc_import_termtype2 function.
These are improvements to existing features:
* check parameter of set_escdelay, return ERR if negative.
* check parameter of set_tabsize, return ERR if not greater than
zero
* correct a status-check in _nc_read_tic_entry() so that if reading
a hex/b64 $TERMINFO, and the $TERM does not match, fall-through to
the compiled-in search list.
* amend check for repeat_char to handle a case where setlocale() was
called after initscr
* move macro for is_linetouched inside NCURSES_NOMACROS ifndef.
* use _nc_copy_termtype2 rather than direct assignment in setupterm,
in case it is called repeatedly using fallback terminfo
descriptions
* improve workaround for Solaris wcwidth versus line-drawing
characters
* add checks in repair_subwindows to keep the current position and
scroll-margins inside the resized subwindow.
* correct a buffer-limit in write_entry.c for systems that use
caseless filenames.
* improved build-time utility report_offsets:
* add categories, e.g., "w" for wide-character, "t" for threads
to make the report more readable. Reorganized the structures
reported to make the categories more apparent.
* add NCURSES_GLOBALS and NCURSES_PRESCREEN to report to show
how similar the different libtinfo configurations are.
* modified some header files to ensure that those include necessary
files except for the previously-documented cases
* added some traces in initialization to show whether a fallback
entry is used.
* made minor optimization to reduce calls to _nc_reserve_pairs
These are corrections to existing features:
* fix a special case in PutAttrChar where a cell is marked as
alternate-character set, but the terminal does not actually
support the given graphic character. This would happen in an older
terminal such as vt52, which lacks most line-drawing capability.
* corrected flag for "seq" method of db 1.8.5 interface, needed by
toe on some of the BSDs.
* modify comparison in make_hash.c to correct a special case in
collision handling for Caps-hpux11
* add extended_slk_color{,_sp} symbols to the appropriate
package/*.{map,sym} files
* modify lib_setup to avoid calling pthread_self() without first
verifying that the address is valid, i.e., for weak symbols
* add a couple of broken-linker symbols to the list of versioned
symbols to help with link-time optimization versus weak symbols.
Program improvements
Several improvements were made to the utility programs:
clear
* improved logic for clearing with the E3 extension, in case
the terminal scrolls content onto its saved-lines before
actually clearing the display, by clearing the saved-lines
after clearing the display
infocmp
* omit filtering of "OTxx" names which are used for obsolete
capabilities, when the output is sorted by long-names. This
change helps when making a table of the short/long capability
names.
tic
* added check for consistent alternate character set
capabilities.
* added check for paired indn/rin.
* added check for terminals with parm_dch vs parm_ich.
* added check for the case where setf/setb are given using
different strings, but provide identical results to
setaf/setab.
* corrected check for ich1.
* changed a too-large terminal entry from a fatal error to a
warning.
toe
* ignores any hex/b64 $TERMINFO value in the list of terminfo
databases.
tset
* replace check in reset command for obsolete "pt" capability
using tbc and hts capabilities as clues
* modify reset to allow for tabstops at intervals other than 8.
* change reset's behavior for margins to simply clear
soft-margins if possible, rather than clearing and then
setting them according to the terminal's width.
tput
* add "x" to getopt string so that "tput -x clear" works.
Several changes were made to the generated ncurses*config scripts and
the analogous ".pc" files to reduce differences between the
configurations they report:
* modified the ncurse*-config and pc-files to more closely match for
the -I and -l options.
* filtered out linker-specs from the --libs report.
* amended the ncurses*-config and pc-files to take into account the
rpath hack which differed between those files.
* modified generated ncurses*config and ncurses.pc, ncursesw.pc,
etc., to list helper libraries such as gpm for static linking.
Examples
Along with the library and utilities, improvements were made to the
ncurses-examples. Most of this activity aimed at improving the
test-packages. A few changes are more generally useful, e.g., for the
main ncurses test-program, and for analyzing traces using the
tracemunch script:
* improve recovery from error when reading command-character in
test/ncurses.c, showing the relevant error message and not exiting
on EINTR.
* improve tracemunch, by keeping track of TERMINAL* values, and if
tracing was first turned on after initialization, attempt to show
distinct screen, window and terminal names anyway.
* modify tracemunch to accept filename parameters in addition to use
as a pipe/filter.
* update tracemunch to work with perl 5.26.2, which changed the
rules for escaping regular expressions.
* add some checks in tracemunch for undefined variables.
* modify TurnOn/TurnOff macros (in lib_vidattr.c and lib_vid_attr.c)
to avoid expansion of "CUR" in trace.
There are other new demo/test programs and reusable examples:
color_content
Demonstrate the color_content and extended_color_content
functions.
demo_tabs
A simple demo of tabs in curses.
dump_window
A portable curses screen-dump, used to compare ncurses screen
contents with Solaris.
pair_content
Demonstrate the pair_content and extended_pair_content
functions.
report_hashing
Check hash-tables used for terminfo and termcap names.
parse_rgb
Sample implementation of the ncurses RGB extension from
user_caps.5, used in picsmap and savescreen programs.
A variety of improvements were made to existing programs, both new
features as well as options added to make the set of programs more
consistent.
* add "-l" option to test/background, to dump screen contents in a
form that lets different curses implementations be compared.
* add "@" command to test/ncurses F-test, to allow rapid jump to
different character pages.
* added enum, regex examples to test/demo_forms
* amend Scaled256() macro in test/picsmap.c to cover the full range
0..1000
* corrected pathname used in Ada95 sample programs for explain.txt,
to work with test-packages, and used an awk script to split the
resulting pathname when it would be too long for a single line.
* ignore interrupted system-call in test/ncurses's command-line,
e.g., if the terminal were resized.
* improved ifdef's for TABSIZE variable, to help with AIX/HPUX
ports.
Terminal database
There are several new terminal descriptions:
alacritty, domterm, kitty, mintty, mintty-direct, ms-terminal,
n7900, nsterm-build309, nsterm-direct, screen5, ti703, ti707,
ti703-w, ti707-w vscode, vscode-direct, xterm-mono, xterm.js
There are many changes to existing terminal descriptions. Some were
updates to several descriptions:
* use ansi+rep in a dozen places
* add rs1 to konsole, mlterm
* improve several flash capabilities with trailing mandatory delays
* drop ich1 from rxvt-basic, Eterm and mlterm to improve
compatibility with old non-curses programs
* add/use xterm+keypad in xterm-new
* use xterm+sl-twm for consistency, nine places
* improve xm example in xterm+x11mouse and xterm+sm_1006.
while others affected specific descriptions. These were retested, to
take into account changes by their developers:
terminator, st
while these are specific fixes based on reviewing documentation, user
reports, or warnings from tic:
adds200:
* fix typo
gnome-256color
* base entry on "gnome", not "vte", for consistency
interix
* trim unnecessary setf/setb
linux-16color
* accommodate Linux console driver incompatibility introduced
in early 2018
nsterm-256color:
* add nsterm-build309 to replace nsterm-256color, assigning the
latter as an alias of nsterm, to make mouse work with
nsterm-256color
regent40:
* renumber function-keys to match manual
regent60:
* add cd (clr_eos)
* corrected acsc
* add shifted function-keys
tvi950:
* added function-key definitions to agree with Televideo 950
manual
* corrected acsc
* remove bogus kf0
* add bel
tvi955:
* fix typo
vi200:
* add acsc string, including right/down-arrow
wy50:
* corrected acsc
wy50 and wy60:
* add shifted function-keys as kF1 to kF16
xterm+x11hilite:
* eliminate unused p5 parameter.
A few entries use extensions (user-defined terminal capabilities):
* use xterm+sm+1006 (aka "SGR 1006 mouse") for konsole-base and
putty
* add Smol/Rmol user-defined capability to tmux and vte-2018
* add Smulx user-defined capability to tmux, vte-2018
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:
* correct error-returns listed in manual pages for a few form
functions
* corrected prototypes in several manpages using script to
extract those in compilable form.
* fix typo in term.5, improve explanation of format
* Clarify in manual pages that vwprintw and vwscanw are obsolete.
They have not been part of X/Open Curses since 2007.
* New/improved history and portability sections:
* curs_addch.3x gives some background for ACS symbols.
* curs_getcchar.3x explains a difference between ncurses and
X/Open Curses.
* curs_getstr.3x gives historical/portability background for
the length parameter of wgetnstr.
* curs_slk.3x lists a few differences between SVr4 curses and
X/Open Curses for soft-keys.
* curs_terminfo.3x explains that the initial implementation of
terminfo in SVr2 was mostly replaced by other developers in
SVr3.
* infocmp.1 explains that the initial version of terminfo had
no tool for decompiling descriptions. That came later, with
SVr3, with a different developer.
* tabs.1 tells more than you wanted to know about the tool.
* tic.1 explains that the initial version of terminfo had a
rudimentary tool (based on termcap) for compiling entries.
The tool used with Unix was developed by others for SVr3.
* toe.1 explains the origin of this tool.
* Improvements for user_caps.5:
* mention meml, memu and box1
* expanded description of XM
* add a clarification regarding the RGB capability.
* mention user_caps.5 in the tic and infocmp manual pages.
* Other improvements:
* curs_add_wch.3x adds note about Unicode terminology for the
line-drawing characters.
* curs_color.3x improves discussion of error returns and
extensions.
* curs_mouse.3x explains how the kmous and XM capabilities are
used for xterm-mouse input.
* curs_refresh.3x improves documentation regarding the virtual
and physical screens.
* curs_util.3x mentions a difference between SVr4 and X/Open
Curses for unctrl.h
* curs_variables.3x improves description of the init_tabs
capability and TABSIZE variable.
* ncurses.3x improves documentation regarding feature-test
macros in curses.h
* resizeterm.3x about top-level windows which touch the
screen's borders.
* tput.1 clarifies how tput determines the terminal size.
There are no new manual pages (all of the manual page updates are to
existing pages).
Some of the improvements are more subtle, relating to the way the
information is presented. For instance, the generated terminfo.5 file
uses a different table layout, allowing it to use space on wide
terminals more effectively.
Interesting bug-fixes
While there were many bugs fixed during development of ncurses 6.2,
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 in tic/infocmp's handling of user-defined
capabilities. These were not recent bugs.
For ncurses, the elapsed time to fix this bug was less than three
years. Someone reported a problem with the terminal description a few
weeks after releasing ncurses 6.1 (in tmux #1264), and the terminal
description was updated that week (ncurses patch 20180224):
The "-c" (check) option of tic is not very useful if it cannot offer
advice on parameters needed for user-defined capabilities. The various
Caps files were reorganized to reduce redundancy, and in the common
portion (Caps-ncurses), a registry of user-defined capabilities is
provided for use by tic. While users can still define their own custom
capabilities, tic will not offer any advice when their parameters do
not match.
In ncurses 6.2, tic makes a special check to allow any type for RGB,
but its being able to do this relies upon fixes made in the ncurses
library in mid-2019.
Configuration changes
Major changes
There are no major changes. Several new options were added to ease
integration of packages with systems using different versions of GNAT
and ncurses. Also, improvements were made to configure checks.
Configuration options
There are a few new/modified configure options:
--with-config-suffix
helps work around a filename conflict with Debian packages
versus test-packages.
--with-ada-libname
allows one to rename the "AdaCurses" library (at least one
packager prefers a lowercase name).
--with-fallbacks
now ensures there is a value, and adds the fallback information
to top-level Makefile summary.
--with-pcre2
check for pcre-posix library to help with MinGW port.
--with-tic-path and
--with-infocmp-path
help work around problems building fallback source using
pre-6.0 tic/infocmp.
--with-versioned-syms
option value can now be a relative pathname.
Portability
Many of the portability changes are implemented via the configure
script:
* ignore $TERMINFO as a default value in configure script if it came
from the infocmp -Q option.
* distinguish gcc from icc and clang when the --enable-warnings
option is not used, to avoid unnecessary warnings about
unrecognized inline options
* consistently prepend new libraries as they are found during
configuration, rather than relying upon the linker to resolve
order dependencies of libraries.
* modified configure scripts to reduce relinking/ranlib during
library install :
* use "install -p" when available, to avoid need for ranlib of
static libraries.
* scripts which use "--disable-relink;" add a 1-second sleep to
work around tools which use whole-second timestamps, e.g., in
utime rather than the actual file system resolution.
* add configure check for getenv to work around implementation shown
in Emscripten which overwrites the previous return value on each
call.
Use that to optionally suppress START_TRACE macro, whose call to
getenv may not work properly
* change target configure level for _XOPEN_SOURCE to 600 to address
use of vsscanf and setenv.
* reduce use of _GNU_SOURCE for current glibc where _DEFAULT_SOURCE
combines with _XOPEN_SOURCE
Allow for Cygwin's newlib when checking for the _DEFAULT_SOURCE
symbol.
MidnightBSD is now checked for the _XOPEN_SOURCE-related
definitions.
* If the check for va_copy or __va_copy fails,
* configure now tries copying the pointers for va_list, or as
an array.
* alternatively, it checks for __builtin_va_copy(), which could
be used with AIX xlc in c89 mode.
* several changes to support a port to Ultrix 3.1:
* check if "b" binary feature of fopen works
* check for missing feature of locale.h
* add fallback for strstr() in test-programs
* add fallback for STDOUT_FILENO in test-programs
* The test/configure script (used for ncurses-examples) is improved:
* work around non-ncurses termcap.h file, e.g., in Slackware.
* check for TABSIZE variable.
* checks for the X11/Intrinsic.h header, accommodate recent
MacOS changes which largely emptied /usr/include.
Here are some of the other portability fixes:
* added dummy "check" rule in top-level and test-Makefile to
simplify building test-packages for ArchLinux.
* dropped library-dependency on psapi for MinGW port, since
win_driver.c defines PSAPI_VERSION to 2, making it use
GetProcessImageFileName from kernel32.dll
* made build-fixes for configuration using --program-suffix with
Ada95, noticed with MacOS but applicable to other platforms
without libpanelw, etc.
* modified ncurses/Makefile.in to fix a case where Debian/testing
changes to the ld --as-needed configuration broke ncurses-examples
test packages.
* used _WIN32/_WIN64 in preference to __MINGW32__/__MINGW64__
symbols to simplify building with Microsoft Visual C++, since the
former are defined in both compiler configurations.
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