curses, terminfo, and termcap

[John Quarterman]

From: John Quarterman (moderator) <ut-sally!std-unix>

Topic:  curses, terminfo, and termcap

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Date: Sat, 6 Jul 85 01:06:24 edt
From: cbosgd.ATT!mark at seismo (Mark Horton)
To: std-unix at ut-sally.arpa
Subject: curses as part of the standard

The System V curses was intended to be mostly upward compatible with
Ken Arnold's version (the one in 4BSD).  It doesn't include a couple
of nonportable features, such as the 2 letter variables in curses.h
and the 4BSD way of getting at your erase character; there are portable
ways of doing this provided.

What I think is important about curses is not the code that implements
it (although this code was hard and it shouldn't have to be done more
than once) but the interface between the program and the package.
Curses is intended as a way to write portable screen oriented applications.
There are a number of functions in curses to enhance portability of the
application, some of which have little to do with screen handling but
seem to be needed by many screen oriented programs.  A curses application
should not care whether it's running on System V, 4.2BSD, or MS DOS.

Simpler implementations of curses that work on a PC make sense.  I know
of two implementations for MS DOS and one for QNX.  I also know of two
for UNIX that don't do optimization of handle braindamaged terminals, but
assume 9600 baud and an ordinary (or specific) terminal.

I personally would like to see curses (or some appripriate subset) become
part of the C standard, along with Standard I/O.  However, it appears that
the committee is not planning to do this.  Lacking this, I would like to
see it become part of a UNIX standard.

	Mark Horton

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Date: Mon, 8 Jul 85 10:15:56 cdt
From: John Quarterman (moderator) <jsq at ut-sally.ARPA>
To: std-unix
Subject: public domain curses and terminfo

While I agree with Mark Horton that it shouldn't be necessary to
implement curses more than once, it appears that somebody else has also
done it.  I've gotten a couple of requests for more information on the
posting of it to mod.sources last November.  The first posting
contained this signature:

	        Pavel Curtis
		Computer Science Dept.
		405 Upson Hall
		Cornell University
		Ithaca, NY 14853
		
		Ph- (607) 256-4934
		
		decvax!cornell!pavel		(UUCP)
		Pavel.Cornell at Udel-Relay	(ARPA)

The moderator of mod.sources is genrad!john, who would know better
than I what arrangements have been made for access to mod.sources archives.

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-- 

John Quarterman,   UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo,harvard,gatech}!ut-sally!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET:  jsq at ut-sally.ARPA, soon to be jsq at sally.UTEXAS.EDU