As far as I know, curses has *never* had these things. 4.2/4.1 have only a single highlighting mode, which is turned on/off by standout()/standend(). The flags in the window structure of my curses.h (4.2 on an IBM RT is what I'm looking at, but as I remember, 4.1 was the same) are in field called _flags. Are you sure you're not thinking of the at&t rewrite of curses?