![]() ![]() The original maintainer of this package is Zeyd Ben-Halim. The ncurses package was originated by Pavel Curtis. ![]() ![]() This document includes tips for using the mouse. The ncurses package can also capture and use event reports from a mouse in some environments (notably, xterm under the X window system). It allows arbitrary combinations of video attributes to be displayed, even on terminals that leave “magic cookies” on the screen to mark changes in attributes. Support for pads (windows of larger than screen size on which the screen or a subwindow defines a viewport).Īlso, this package makes use of the insert and delete line and character features of terminals so equipped, and determines how to optimally use these features with no help from the programmer.Support for line- and box-drawing using forms characters.Support for multiple screen highlights (BSD curses could only handle one “standout” highlight, usually reverse-video).It includes the following System V curses features: This document describes ncurses, a free implementation of the System V curses API with some clearly marked extensions. In the later AT&T System V releases, curses evolved to use more facilities and offer more capabilities, going far beyond BSD curses in power and flexibility. Parameterized capabilities strings were introduced, making it possible to describe multiple video attributes, and colors and to handle far more unusual terminals than possible with termcap. To recap, terminfo is based on Berkeley's termcap database, but contains a number of improvements and extensions. System V Release 3 (System III UNIX) from Bell Labs featured a rewritten and much-improved curses library, along with the tic program (late 1986). As a general rule, AT&T did not identify the developers in the source-code or documentation the tic and infocmp programs are the exceptions. For instance, a student at Cornell University wrote an improved terminfo library as well as a tool ( tic) to compile the terminal descriptions. Thereafter, other developers added to the curses and terminfo libraries. That was subsequently released in System V Release 2 (early 1984). The curses library was first published in 4.0BSD, a year after 3BSD (i.e., late 1980).Īfter graduation, one of those students went to work at AT&T Bell Labs, and made an improved termcap library called terminfo (i.e., “libterm”), and adapted the curses library to use this. All of this work was done by students at the University of California (Berkeley campus). These routines were abstracted into a documented library and first released with the early BSD UNIX versions. Historically, the first ancestor of curses was the routines written to provide screen-handling for the vi editor these used the termcap database facility (both released in 3BSD) for describing terminal capabilities. For an application that does not require bit-mapped graphics and multiple fonts, an interface implementation using curses will typically be a great deal simpler and less expensive than one using an X toolkit. Nevertheless, UNIX still supports tty lines and X supports xterm(1) the curses API has the advantage of (a) back-portability to character-cell terminals, and (b) simplicity. The curses API may seem something of an archaism on UNIX desktops increasingly dominated by X, Motif, and Tcl/Tk. Curses uses terminfo, which is a database format that can describe the capabilities of thousands of different terminals. The curses package is a subroutine library for terminal-independent screen-painting and input-event handling which presents a high level screen model to the programmer, hiding differences between terminal types and doing automatic optimization of output to change one screen full of text into another. If you are not so experienced, keep reading. These will bring you up to speed on the special features and quirks of the ncurses implementation. If you are already an experienced curses programmer, you should nevertheless read the sections on Mouse Interfacing, Debugging, Compatibility with Older Versions, and Hints, Tips, and Tricks. This document is aimed at C applications programmers not yet specifically familiar with ncurses. Rather, it is intended to help C programmers ease into using the package. It is not an exhaustive reference for the curses Application Programming Interface (API) that role is filled by the curses manual pages. This document is an introduction to programming with curses. Standard Windows and Function Naming Conventions.Updates since release 1.9.9e by Thomas Dickey Contents ![]()
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