Problem with Curses

[T.E.Dickey]

Klaus-Juergen Wolf <kjwolf at online.de> wrote:
> T.E.Dickey <dickey at shell.clark.net> wrote:
>  >>> It depends on when the executable is linked to libmytinfo, which only
>  >>> takes place on platforms that don't know the terminfo database, like
>  >>> BSD and Solaris; there are two competing declarations of tputs().

>  >> Why doesn't Freebsd know the terminfo database? Can't the one that is 
>  >> integrated into ncurses be used on FreeBSD? 

>  > I've been told ncurses 4.2 is incorporated in the FreeBSD 3.1 - but that
>  > may still just be a port...

> Yes, there is such a port. Do you think, one could release code that
> works on several machines, while some of them must install a special
> program first?

I don't understand this comment (you seem to be saying that because there
is some reluctance to install a working version of ncurses, that there's
no reason to use packages which use it).

> Curses now is a very old UI, very old, it was old when I first learned
> it in the beginning of the 80's. Most people have forgotten that there

not very old at that point (iirc, it dates to the late 70's, and was still
considered "new" when I encountered it in 1983)

> was a Curses before NCurses came up. cursesmodule now, it bases on
> Curses with NCurses extensions. It is not acceptable to release a

as I understand it, most of the "NCurses extensions" you refer to are
standard in SVr4 curses (color, function keys).

> cursesmodule that wouldn't work on all those platforms it formerly
> worked on. If you intend that, you'll have to give it a new name.
> Furthermore, you can't say, to make cursesmodule work, you have got to
> download another one, it's beta, but maybe, it works on your desolated
> site. But that's no solution. That's a cramp.

> Anyway, that wouldn't have helped in my case, I think, since the name
> conflict would have still existed - libtermcap would have been linked
> before, since libreadline demands it, and, I'm afraid, since ncurses
> originally defines tputs(), it would also been mis-linked. I don't
> really know, I guess. I'm not so familiar with the dynamic linking
> rules under ELF/BSD.

that's a different problem (libreadline doesn't mix with curses on any
system because it makes incompatible assumptions about terminal initalization).

> cu
>  k.j.


> -- 
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-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
dickey at clark.net
http://www.clark.net/pub/dickey