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   <title>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</title>
   <link rev="made" href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">
   <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
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   <h1>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</h1>The ncurses (new curses)
   library is a free software emulation of curses in System V
   Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo format, supports pads and
   color and multiple highlights and forms characters and
   function-key mapping, and has all the other SYSV-curses
   enhancements over BSD curses.

   <p>In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared
   that he considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the
   keepers of Unix releases such as BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to
   switch over to ncurses.</p>

   <p>The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It has been in
   use for some time with OpenBSD as the system curses library, and
   on FreeBSD and NetBSD as an external package. It should port
   easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported
   to OS/2 Warp!</p>

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

   <p>The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at the
   GNU distribution site <a href=
   "ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/</a>&nbsp;.<br>

   It is also available at <a href=
   "ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a>&nbsp;.</p>

   <h1>Release Notes</h1>This release is designed to be upward
   compatible from ncurses 5.0 through 5.8; very few applications
   will require recompilation, depending on the platform. These are
   the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.8 release.
   <p>
   This is a bug-fix release, correcting a small number of urgent problems
   in the ncurses library from the 5.8 release.
   <p>
   It also improves the Ada95 binding:
   <ul>
   <li>fixes a longstanding portability problem with its use of the
       <a href="http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/form_fieldtype.3x">set_field_type</a>
       function.  Because that function uses variable-length argument lists,
       its interface with gnat does not work with certain platforms.
   <li>improves configurability and portability, particularly when built
       separately from the main ncurses tree.  The 5.8 release introduced
       scripts which can be used to construct separate tarballs for the
       Ada95 and ncurses examples.
       <p>Those were a proof of concept.  For the 5.9 release, those
       scripts are augmented with rpm- and dpkg-scripts used in test builds
       against a variety of gnat- and system ncurses versions as old as
       gnat 3.15 and ncurses 5.4 (see snapshots and systems tested
       <a href="http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-Ada95.html">here</a>.
   <li>additional improvements were made for portability of the
       ncurses examples, adding rpm- and dpkg-scripts for test-builds.
       See
       <a href="http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html">this page</a>
       for snapshots and other information.
   </ul>

   <h1>Features of Ncurses</h1>The ncurses package is fully
   compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4) curses:

   <ul>
     <li>All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are
     documented).</li>

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

     <li>An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting a stack
     of windows with backing store, is included.</li>

     <li>An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting a
     uniform but flexible interface for menu programming, is
     included.</li>

     <li>An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting data
     collection through on-screen forms, is included.</li>

     <li>Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1)
     implementation are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format
     SVr4 curses uses.</li>

     <li>The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo
     entries for use with less capable
     <strong>curses</strong>/<strong>terminfo</strong> versions such
     as the HP/UX and AIX ports.</li>
   </ul>The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over
   SVr4:

   <ul>
     <li>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, and most EXTENDED features). It
     includes many function calls not supported under SVr4 curses
     (but portability of all calls is documented so you can use the
     SVr4 subset only).</li>

     <li>Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the
     rightmost-bottommost corner of the screen if your terminal has
     an insert-character capability.</li>

     <li>Ada95 and C++ bindings.</li>

     <li>Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and
     FreeBSD and OS/2 console windows.</li>

     <li>Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm
     package.</li>

     <li>The function <code>wresize</code> allows you to resize
     windows, preserving their data.</li>

     <li>The function <code>use_default_colors</code> allows you to
     use the terminal's default colors for the default color pair,
     achieving the effect of transparent colors.</li>

     <li>The functions <code>keyok</code> and
     <code>define_key</code> allow you to better control the use of
     function keys, e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE, or by
     defining more than one control sequence to map to a given key
     code.</li>

     <li>Support for 256-color terminals, such as modern xterm, when
     configured using the <code>--enable-ext-colors</code>
     option.</li>

     <li>Support for 16-color terminals, such as <em>aixterm</em>
     and <em>modern xterm</em>.</li>

     <li>Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now
     features a cursor-local-movement computation more efficient
     than either BSD's or System V's.</li>

     <li>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 <code>quickch</code>
     routine.</li>

     <li>Real support for terminals with the magic-cookie glitch.
     The screen-update code will refrain from drawing a highlight if
     the magic- cookie unattributed spaces required just before the
     beginning and after the end would step on a non-space
     character. It will automatically shift highlight boundaries
     when doing so would make it possible to draw the highlight
     without changing the visual appearance of the screen.</li>

     <li>It is possible to generate the library with a list of
     pre-loaded fallback entries linked to it so that it can serve
     those terminal types even when no terminfo tree or termcap file
     is accessible (this may be useful for support of
     screen-oriented programs that must run in single-user
     mode).</li>

     <li>The tic(1)/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the
     ability to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and
     AT&amp;T extension sets.</li>

     <li>A BSD-like tset(1) utility is provided.</li>

     <li>The ncurses library and utilities will automatically read
     terminfo entries from $HOME/.terminfo if it exists, and compile
     to that directory if it exists and the user has no write access
     to the system directory. This feature makes it easier for users
     to have personal terminfo entries without giving up access to
     the system terminfo directory.</li>

     <li>You may specify a path of directories to search for
     compiled descriptions with the environment variable
     TERMINFO_DIRS (this generalizes the feature provided by
     TERMINFO under stock System V.)</li>

     <li>In terminfo source files, use capabilities may refer not
     just to other entries in the same source file (as in System V)
     but also to compiled entries in either the system terminfo
     directory or the user's $HOME/.terminfo directory.</li>

     <li>A script (<strong>capconvert</strong>) is provided to help
     BSD users transition from termcap to terminfo. It gathers the
     information in a TERMCAP environment variable and/or a
     ~/.termcap local entries file and converts it to an equivalent
     local terminfo tree under $HOME/.terminfo.</li>

     <li>Automatic fallback to the /etc/termcap file can be compiled
     in when it is not possible to build 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.</li>

     <li>The table-of-entries utility <strong>toe</strong> makes it
     easy for users to see exactly what terminal types are available
     on the system.</li>

     <li>The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro
     entry point have a corresponding function which may be linked
     (and will be prototype-checked) if the macro definition is
     disabled with <code>#undef</code>.</li>

     <li>An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document
     provides a narrative introduction to the curses programming
     interface.</li>
   </ul>

   <h1>State of the Package</h1>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.

   <p>The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of
   applications including (versions starting with those noted):</p>

   <dl>
     <dt>cdk</dt>

     <dd>Curses Development Kit<br>
     <a href=
     "http://invisible-island.net/cdk/">http://invisible-island.net/cdk/</a><br>

     <a href=
     "http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/">http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/</a></dd>

     <dt>ded</dt>

     <dd>directory-editor<br>
     <a href=
     "http://invisible-island.net/ded/">http://invisible-island.net/ded/</a></dd>

     <dt>dialog</dt>

     <dd>the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and
     the basis for similar applications on GNU/Linux.<br>
     <a href=
     "http://invisible-island.net/dialog/">http://invisible-island.net/dialog/</a></dd>

     <dt>lynx</dt>

     <dd>the character-screen WWW browser<br>
     <a href=
     "http://lynx.isc.org/release/">http://lynx.isc.org/release/</a></dd>

     <dt>Midnight Commander</dt>

     <dd>file manager<br>
     <a href=
     "http://www.midnight-commander.org/">http://www.midnight-commander.org/</a></dd>

     <dt>mutt</dt>

     <dd>mail utility<br>
     <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">http://www.mutt.org/</a></dd>

     <dt>ncftp</dt>

     <dd>file-transfer utility<br>
     <a href="http://www.ncftp.com/">http://www.ncftp.com/</a></dd>

     <dt>nvi</dt>

     <dd>New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7
     and later.<br>
     <a href=
     "https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi">https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi</a><br>
     </dd>

     <dt>pinfo</dt>

     <dd>Lynx-like info browser. <a href=
     "https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/</a></dd>

     <dt>tin</dt>

     <dd>newsreader, supporting color, MIME <a href=
     "http://www.tin.org/">http://www.tin.org/</a></dd>
   </dl>as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support
   alone:

   <dl>
     <dt>minicom</dt>

     <dd>terminal emulator<br>
     <a href=
     "http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/">http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/</a></dd>

     <dt>vile</dt>

     <dd>vi-like-emacs<br>
     <a href=
     "http://invisible-island.net/vile/">http://invisible-island.net/vile/</a></dd>
   </dl>

   <p>The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs
   (including a few games).</p>

   <h2>Who's Who and What's What</h2>Zeyd Ben-Halim started it from
   a previous package pcurses, written by Pavel Curtis. Eric S.
   Raymond continued development. J&uuml;rgen Pfeifer wrote most of
   the form and menu libraries. Ongoing work is being done by
   <a href="mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net">Thomas Dickey</a>.
   Thomas Dickey acts as the maintainer for the Free Software
   Foundation, which holds the copyright on ncurses. Contact the
   current maintainers at <a href=
   "mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">bug-ncurses@gnu.org</a>.

   <p>To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to
   <code>bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org</code> containing the line:</p>
   <pre>
              subscribe &lt;name&gt;@&lt;host.domain&gt;
 </pre>

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

   <p>Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release
   are made available at <a href=
   "ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a>&nbsp;.</p>

   <h2>Future Plans</h2>

   <ul>
     <li>Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization
     support.</li>

     <li>Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.</li>
   </ul>We need people to help with these projects. If you are
   interested in working on them, please join the ncurses list.

   <h2>Other Related Resources</h2>The distribution provides a newer
   version of the terminfo-format terminal description file once
   maintained by <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/">Eric
   Raymond</a>&nbsp;. Unlike the older version, the termcap and
   terminfo data are provided in the same file, and provides several
   user-definable extensions beyond the X/Open specification.

   <p>You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics
   not covered in the terminfo file at <a href=
   "http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal">
   Richard Shuford's archive</a>&nbsp;.</p>
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	<html>
	<head>
	<meta name="generator" content=
	"HTML Tidy for Linux/x86 (vers 6 November 2007), see www.w3.org">

	<title>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</title>
	<link rev="made" href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
	"text/html; charset=us-ascii">
	</head>

	<body>
	<h1>Announcing ncurses @VERSION@</h1>The ncurses (new curses)
	library is a free software emulation of curses in System V
	Release 4.0, and more. It uses terminfo format, supports pads and
	color and multiple highlights and forms characters and
	function-key mapping, and has all the other SYSV-curses
	enhancements over BSD curses.

	<p>In mid-June 1995, the maintainer of 4.4BSD curses declared
	that he considered 4.4BSD curses obsolete, and encouraged the
	keepers of Unix releases such as BSD/OS, FreeBSD and NetBSD to
	switch over to ncurses.</p>

	<p>The ncurses code was developed under GNU/Linux. It has been in
	use for some time with OpenBSD as the system curses library, and
	on FreeBSD and NetBSD as an external package. It should port
	easily to any ANSI/POSIX-conforming UNIX. It has even been ported
	to OS/2 Warp!</p>

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

	<p>The ncurses distribution is available via anonymous FTP at the
	GNU distribution site <a href=
	"ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/</a> .<br>

	It is also available at <a href=
	"ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a> .</p>

	<h1>Release Notes</h1>This release is designed to be upward
	compatible from ncurses 5.0 through 5.8; very few applications
	will require recompilation, depending on the platform. These are
	the highlights from the change-log since ncurses 5.8 release.
	<p>
	This is a bug-fix release, correcting a small number of urgent problems
	in the ncurses library from the 5.8 release.
	<p>
	It also improves the Ada95 binding:
	<ul>
	<li>fixes a longstanding portability problem with its use of the
	<a href="http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/form_fieldtype.3x">set_field_type</a>
	function. Because that function uses variable-length argument lists,
	its interface with gnat does not work with certain platforms.
	<li>improves configurability and portability, particularly when built
	separately from the main ncurses tree. The 5.8 release introduced
	scripts which can be used to construct separate tarballs for the
	Ada95 and ncurses examples.
	<p>Those were a proof of concept. For the 5.9 release, those
	scripts are augmented with rpm- and dpkg-scripts used in test builds
	against a variety of gnat- and system ncurses versions as old as
	gnat 3.15 and ncurses 5.4 (see snapshots and systems tested
	<a href="http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-Ada95.html">here</a>.
	<li>additional improvements were made for portability of the
	ncurses examples, adding rpm- and dpkg-scripts for test-builds.
	See
	<a href="http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html">this page</a>
	for snapshots and other information.
	</ul>

	<h1>Features of Ncurses</h1>The ncurses package is fully
	compatible with SVr4 (System V Release 4) curses:

	<ul>
	<li>All 257 of the SVr4 calls have been implemented (and are
	documented).</li>

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

	<li>An emulation of the SVr4 panels library, supporting a stack
	of windows with backing store, is included.</li>

	<li>An emulation of the SVr4 menus library, supporting a
	uniform but flexible interface for menu programming, is
	included.</li>

	<li>An emulation of the SVr4 form library, supporting data
	collection through on-screen forms, is included.</li>

	<li>Binary terminfo entries generated by the ncurses tic(1)
	implementation are bit-for-bit-compatible with the entry format
	SVr4 curses uses.</li>

	<li>The utilities have options to allow you to filter terminfo
	entries for use with less capable
	<strong>curses</strong>/<strong>terminfo</strong> versions such
	as the HP/UX and AIX ports.</li>
	</ul>The ncurses package also has many useful extensions over
	SVr4:

	<ul>
	<li>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, and most EXTENDED features). It
	includes many function calls not supported under SVr4 curses
	(but portability of all calls is documented so you can use the
	SVr4 subset only).</li>

	<li>Unlike SVr3 curses, ncurses can write to the
	rightmost-bottommost corner of the screen if your terminal has
	an insert-character capability.</li>

	<li>Ada95 and C++ bindings.</li>

	<li>Support for mouse event reporting with X Window xterm and
	FreeBSD and OS/2 console windows.</li>

	<li>Extended mouse support via Alessandro Rubini's gpm
	package.</li>

	<li>The function <code>wresize</code> allows you to resize
	windows, preserving their data.</li>

	<li>The function <code>use_default_colors</code> allows you to
	use the terminal's default colors for the default color pair,
	achieving the effect of transparent colors.</li>

	<li>The functions <code>keyok</code> and
	<code>define_key</code> allow you to better control the use of
	function keys, e.g., disabling the ncurses KEY_MOUSE, or by
	defining more than one control sequence to map to a given key
	code.</li>

	<li>Support for 256-color terminals, such as modern xterm, when
	configured using the <code>--enable-ext-colors</code>
	option.</li>

	<li>Support for 16-color terminals, such as <em>aixterm</em>
	and <em>modern xterm</em>.</li>

	<li>Better cursor-movement optimization. The package now
	features a cursor-local-movement computation more efficient
	than either BSD's or System V's.</li>

	<li>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 <code>quickch</code>
	routine.</li>

	<li>Real support for terminals with the magic-cookie glitch.
	The screen-update code will refrain from drawing a highlight if
	the magic- cookie unattributed spaces required just before the
	beginning and after the end would step on a non-space
	character. It will automatically shift highlight boundaries
	when doing so would make it possible to draw the highlight
	without changing the visual appearance of the screen.</li>

	<li>It is possible to generate the library with a list of
	pre-loaded fallback entries linked to it so that it can serve
	those terminal types even when no terminfo tree or termcap file
	is accessible (this may be useful for support of
	screen-oriented programs that must run in single-user
	mode).</li>

	<li>The tic(1)/captoinfo utility provided with ncurses has the
	ability to translate many termcaps from the XENIX, IBM and
	AT&T extension sets.</li>

	<li>A BSD-like tset(1) utility is provided.</li>

	<li>The ncurses library and utilities will automatically read
	terminfo entries from $HOME/.terminfo if it exists, and compile
	to that directory if it exists and the user has no write access
	to the system directory. This feature makes it easier for users
	to have personal terminfo entries without giving up access to
	the system terminfo directory.</li>

	<li>You may specify a path of directories to search for
	compiled descriptions with the environment variable
	TERMINFO_DIRS (this generalizes the feature provided by
	TERMINFO under stock System V.)</li>

	<li>In terminfo source files, use capabilities may refer not
	just to other entries in the same source file (as in System V)
	but also to compiled entries in either the system terminfo
	directory or the user's $HOME/.terminfo directory.</li>

	<li>A script (<strong>capconvert</strong>) is provided to help
	BSD users transition from termcap to terminfo. It gathers the
	information in a TERMCAP environment variable and/or a
	~/.termcap local entries file and converts it to an equivalent
	local terminfo tree under $HOME/.terminfo.</li>

	<li>Automatic fallback to the /etc/termcap file can be compiled
	in when it is not possible to build 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.</li>

	<li>The table-of-entries utility <strong>toe</strong> makes it
	easy for users to see exactly what terminal types are available
	on the system.</li>

	<li>The library meets the XSI requirement that every macro
	entry point have a corresponding function which may be linked
	(and will be prototype-checked) if the macro definition is
	disabled with <code>#undef</code>.</li>

	<li>An HTML "Introduction to Programming with NCURSES" document
	provides a narrative introduction to the curses programming
	interface.</li>
	</ul>

	<h1>State of the Package</h1>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.

	<p>The ncurses code has been tested with a wide variety of
	applications including (versions starting with those noted):</p>

	<dl>
	<dt>cdk</dt>

	<dd>Curses Development Kit<br>
	<a href=
	"http://invisible-island.net/cdk/">http://invisible-island.net/cdk/</a><br>

	<a href=
	"http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/">http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/</a></dd>

	<dt>ded</dt>

	<dd>directory-editor<br>
	<a href=
	"http://invisible-island.net/ded/">http://invisible-island.net/ded/</a></dd>

	<dt>dialog</dt>

	<dd>the underlying application used in Slackware's setup, and
	the basis for similar applications on GNU/Linux.<br>
	<a href=
	"http://invisible-island.net/dialog/">http://invisible-island.net/dialog/</a></dd>

	<dt>lynx</dt>

	<dd>the character-screen WWW browser<br>
	<a href=
	"http://lynx.isc.org/release/">http://lynx.isc.org/release/</a></dd>

	<dt>Midnight Commander</dt>

	<dd>file manager<br>
	<a href=
	"http://www.midnight-commander.org/">http://www.midnight-commander.org/</a></dd>

	<dt>mutt</dt>

	<dd>mail utility<br>
	<a href="http://www.mutt.org/">http://www.mutt.org/</a></dd>

	<dt>ncftp</dt>

	<dd>file-transfer utility<br>
	<a href="http://www.ncftp.com/">http://www.ncftp.com/</a></dd>

	<dt>nvi</dt>

	<dd>New vi versions 1.50 are able to use ncurses versions 1.9.7
	and later.<br>
	<a href=
	"https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi">https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/nvi</a><br>
	</dd>

	<dt>pinfo</dt>

	<dd>Lynx-like info browser. <a href=
	"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pinfo/</a></dd>

	<dt>tin</dt>

	<dd>newsreader, supporting color, MIME <a href=
	"http://www.tin.org/">http://www.tin.org/</a></dd>
	</dl>as well as some that use ncurses for the terminfo support
	alone:

	<dl>
	<dt>minicom</dt>

	<dd>terminal emulator<br>
	<a href=
	"http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/">http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/</a></dd>

	<dt>vile</dt>

	<dd>vi-like-emacs<br>
	<a href=
	"http://invisible-island.net/vile/">http://invisible-island.net/vile/</a></dd>
	</dl>

	<p>The ncurses distribution includes a selection of test programs
	(including a few games).</p>

	<h2>Who's Who and What's What</h2>Zeyd Ben-Halim started it from
	a previous package pcurses, written by Pavel Curtis. Eric S.
	Raymond continued development. Jürgen Pfeifer wrote most of
	the form and menu libraries. Ongoing work is being done by
	<a href="mailto:dickey@invisible-island.net">Thomas Dickey</a>.
	Thomas Dickey acts as the maintainer for the Free Software
	Foundation, which holds the copyright on ncurses. Contact the
	current maintainers at <a href=
	"mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">bug-ncurses@gnu.org</a>.

	<p>To join the ncurses mailing list, please write email to
	<code>bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org</code> containing the line:</p>
	<pre>
	subscribe <name>@<host.domain>
	</pre>

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

	<p>Beta versions of ncurses and patches to the current release
	are made available at <a href=
	"ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/">ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/</a> .</p>

	<h2>Future Plans</h2>

	<ul>
	<li>Extended-level XPG4 conformance, with internationalization
	support.</li>

	<li>Ports to more systems, including DOS and Windows.</li>
	</ul>We need people to help with these projects. If you are
	interested in working on them, please join the ncurses list.

	<h2>Other Related Resources</h2>The distribution provides a newer
	version of the terminfo-format terminal description file once
	maintained by <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/terminfo/">Eric
	Raymond</a> . Unlike the older version, the termcap and
	terminfo data are provided in the same file, and provides several
	user-definable extensions beyond the X/Open specification.

	<p>You can find lots of information on terminal-related topics
	not covered in the terminfo file at <a href=
	"http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal">
	Richard Shuford's archive</a> .</p>
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