Problem with Curses

[Klaus-Juergen Wolf]

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?

In the top priority, Python should work. When you compile it, it should
work. When you decide to link libraries you have, it should work. When
you release code for Python, it *must* work.

Therefore, there are some modules that base on old, long forgotten
states, but still, some machines work with these, and only with these.

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

cu
 k.j.


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