Greenhouse Effect Detection Expriment/NASA Greenhouse Effect Detection Expriment 1992 - Disc 2.iso/software/dos/cdf22pc/src/tools/curses/readme.now

Text File | 1991-12-23 | 17.6 KB | 357 lines

                   PCCURSES v.1.4 Release Notes - 900114
            ===================================================

  This is the release note for the fifth version of PCcurses, v.1.4. Below
this note, the release notes for v.1.0 - v.1.3 are included. Read those
first.

  In PCcurses v.1.4, both portability improvements and bugfixes have been
made. The files have been changed to allow lint-free compilation with
MicroSoft 'C' v.5.1, and with Turbo 'C' v.2.0. The source should still
compile without problems on older compilers, although this has not been
verified.

  The makefiles have been changed to suit both the public release and the
author, who maintains a special kind of libraries for himself. In the case
of MicroSoft 'C', changes were done in the makefile to lower the warning
level to 2 (was 3). This was to avoid ANSI warnings which are abundant
because PCcurses does not attempt to follow strict ANSI 'C' standard.

  BUG FIXES FROM V.1.3 TO V.1.4:

  !!!IMPORTANT CHANGE!!!

  The definitions for OK and ERR in curses.h were exchanged. This was done
to be more consistent with UNIX versions. Also, it permits functions like
newwin() and subwin() to return 0 (=NULL) when they fail due to memory
shortage. This incompatibility with UNIX curses was pointed out by Fred C.
Smith. If you have tested success/failure by comparisons to anything other
than ERR and OK, your applications will need to be be changed on that
point. Sorry... but presumably most of you used the symbolic constants?

  (END OF IMPORTANT CHANGE)

  Fred also pointed out a bug in the file update.c. The bug caused the
first character printed after 'unauthorized' screen changes (like during a
shell escape, for example) to be placed at the wrong screen position. This
happened even if the normal precautions (clear / touch / refresh) were
taken. The problem has now been fixed.

  PCcurses is currently also being used on a 68000 system with hard-coded
ESCape sequences for ANSI terminals. However, int's used by the 68000 C
compiler are 32 bits. Therefore int's have been turned into short's
wherever possible in the code (otherwise all window structures occupy twice
as much space as required on the 68000). This does not affect PC versions
since normally both int's and short's are 16 bits for PC C compilers.

  At some places in the source code there are references made to the 68000
version. There are also a makefile, a curses68.c file, and a curses68.cmd
file. These are for making, low-level I/O, and linking commands when
building the 68000 version. These files are probably useful to no-one but
the author, since it is very specific for it's special hardware
environment. Still in an effort to keep all curses-related sources in one
place they are included. Note however that PCcurses will not officially
support a non-PC environment.

  The file cursesio.c, which was included in the package at revision level
1.2, and which was to be an alternative to the cursesio.asm file, has been
verified to behave incorrectly in the function _curseskeytst(). The problem
was that the value of 'cflag' does not contain the proper data for the test
that is attempted. Furthermore, neither Turbo'C' or MicroSoft'C' allows any
way to return the data that is needed, and consequently you should not use
cursesio.c. The best solution is to simply use the ASM version. In v.1.2
and v.1.3, the user could edit the makefile to select which version he
wanted to use. The makefiles in v.1.4 have removed this possiblity forcing
the use of the ASM file, and cursesio.c has been dropped from the
distribution.

  A bug in the wgetstr() function caused PCcurses to echo characters when
reading a keyboard string, even if the echo had been turned off. Thanks to
Per Foreby at Lund University, Sweden, for this. Per also reported bugs
concerning the handling of characters with bit 8 set. Their ASCII code were
considered as lower than 32, so they were erased etc. like control
characters, i.e. erasing two character positions. The control character
test was changed to cope with this.

  The overlay() and overwrite() functions were changed so that the
overlaying window is positioned at it's 'own' coordinates inside the
underlying window (it used to be at the underlying window's [0,0]
position). There is some controversy about this - the documentation for
different curses versions say different things. I think the choice made is
the most reasonable.

  The border() and wborder() functions were changed to actually draw a
border, since this seems to be the correct behaviour of these functions.
They used to just set the border characters to be used by box(). These
functions are  not present in standard BSD UNIX curses.

  The subwin() function previously did not allow the subwindow to be as big
as the original window in which it was created. This has now been fixed.
There was also the problem that the default size (set by specifying
numlines or numcols (or both) as 0 made the resulting actual size 1
line/column too small.

  There were a few spelling errors in function names, both in the function
declarations and in curses.h. This was reported by Carlos Amaral at INESC
in Portugal. Thanks! There was also an unnecessary (but harmless) parameter
in a function call at one place.



                   PCCURSES v.1.3 Release Notes - 881005
            ===================================================

  This is the release note for the fourth version of PCcurses, v.1.3. Below
this note, the release notes for v.1.0, v.1.1 and v.1.2 are included. Read
those first.

  The file 'border.c' is now included. It allows you to explicitely specify
what characters should be used as box borders when the box() functions are
called. If the new border characters are non-0, they override the border
characters specified in the box() call. In my understanding, this
functionality is required for AT&T UNIX sV.3 compatibility. Thanks for this
goes to Tony L. Hansen ([e-mail]) for posting an article about
it on UseNet (newsgroup comp.unix.questions; his posting was not related at
all to PCcurses).

  The only other difference between v.1.2 and v.1.3 is that the latter has
been changed to avoid warning diagnostics if the source files are compiled
with warning switches on (for MicroSoft this means '-W3', for Turbo'C' it
means '-w -w-pro'). Of these, the Turbo'C' warning check is clearly to be
used rather than MicroSoft, even if neither of them comes even close to a
real UNIX 'lint'. Some of the warnings in fact indicated real bugs, mostly
functions that did not return correct return values or types.

  The makefiles for both MSC and TRC have been modified to produce warning
messages as part of normal compilation.




                   PCCURSES v.1.2 Release Notes - 881002
            ===================================================

  This is the release note for the third version of PCcurses, v.1.2. Below
this note, the release notes for v.1.0 and v.1.1 are included. Read those
first.

  The changes from v.1.1 to v.1.2 are minor. The biggest change is that
there was a bug related to limiting the cursor movement if the application
tried to move it outside the screen (something that should not be done
anyway). Such erronous application behaviour is now handled appropriately.

  All modules have been changed to have a revison string in them, which
makes it easier to determine what version is linked into a program (or what
library version you have).

  There is now a 'cursesio.c' file. That file does the same as
'cursesio.asm' (i.e. it provides the interface to the lower-level system
I/O routines). It is written in 'C' and thus it is (possibly) more portable
than the assembler version (but still not so portable since it uses 8086
INT XX calls directly). When one creates new curses libraries, one chooses
whether to use the assembler or the 'C' version of cursesio. The choice is
made by commenting out the appropriate dependencies for cursesio.obj, near
the end of the makefiles.

  There is now a 'setmode.c' file. That file contains functions that save
and restore terminal modes. They do it into other variables than do
savetty() and resetty(), so one should probably use either
savetty()/resetty() or the new functions only - and not mix the both ways
unless one really knows what one does.

  Diff lists vs v.1.0 are no longer included in the distribution. The make
utility still is. PCcurses v.1.2 still compiles with MicroSoft 'C' v.4.0,
and with Borland Turbo 'C' v.1.0. There is as far as I know no reason to
believe that it does not compile under MicroSoft 'C' v.3.0 and 5.x, or
Turbo-'C' v.1.5, but this has not been tested.

  There are two makefile's included, one for MicroSoft 'C', one for
Turbo-'C'. They are both copies of my personal makefile's, and as such they
reflect the directory structure on my own computer. This will have to be
changed before you run make. Check $(INCDIR) and $(LIBDIR) in particular,
and make the choice of ASM or 'C' cursesio version as mentioned above (the
distribution version uses the 'C version of cursesio).

  The manual file (curses.man) has been changed at appropriate places.

  I would like to thank the following persons for their help:

      Brandon S. Allbery ([e-mail])
          for running comp.binaries.ibm.pc (at that time)
          and comp.source.misc.

      Steve Balogh ([e-mail])
          for writing a set of manual pages and posting
          them to the net.

      Torbjorn Lindh
          for finding bugs and suggesting raw
          character output routines.

      Nathan Glasser ([e-mail])
          for finding and reporting bugs.

      Ingvar Olafsson (...enea!hafro!ingvar)
          for finding and reporting bugs.

      Eric Rosco (...enea!ipmoea!ericr)
          for finding and reporting bugs.

      Steve Creps ([e-mail])
          for doing a lot of work - among others
          posting bug fixes to the net, and writing
          the new cursesio.c module.

      N. Dean Pentcheff ([e-mail])
          for finding bugs and rewriting cursesio.asm
          for Turbo 'C' 1.5.

  Finally, Jeff Dean (parcvax,hplabs}!cdp!jeff)
               ([e-mail])
      has had a shareware version of curses deliverable since about half a
      year before I released PCcurses 1.0 on UseNet. He is very concerned
      about confusion between the two packages, and therefore any
      references on the network should make clear whether they reference
      Dean's PCcurses or Larsson's PCcurses.



                   PCCURSES v.1.1 Release Notes - 880306
            ===================================================

  This is the release note for the second version of PCcurses, v.1.1. Below
this note, the release note for v.1.0 is included. Read that first. The
changes from v.1.0 to v.1.1 are minor. There are a few bug fixes, and new
(non-portable) functions for verbatim IBM character font display have been
added (in charadd.c and charins.c). The manual file (curses.man) has been
changed at appropriate places.

  In the file v10tov11.dif there are listings of the differencies between
version 1.0 and 1.1. The diff listings are in UNIX diff(1) format.

  Version 1.1 compiles with Turbo 'C' v.1.0, as well as MicroSoft 'C' v.3.0
and v.4.0. On the release disk there is a make.exe utility which is very
similar to UNIX make (If the package was mailed to you, the make utility
will be in uuencoded format - in make.uu - and must be uudecoded first). It
is much more powerful than MicroSoft's different MAKE'S; the latter ones
will NOT generate libraries properly if used with the PCcurses makefiles.

  There are three makefiles:

      makefile        generic MSC 3.0 makefile
      makefile.ms     MSC 4.0 makefile
      makefile.tc     Turbo 'C' 1.0 makefile

  To make a library with for example Turbo 'C', make directories to hold .H
and .LIB files (these directories are the 'standard places'), edit
makefile.tc for this, and type

      make -f makefile.tc all

and libraries for all memory models will be created in the .LIB directory,
while the include files will end up in the .H directory. Also read what is
said about installation below!




                   PCCURSES v.1.0 Release Notes - 870824
            ===================================================


  This is the release notes for the PCcurses v.1.0 cursor/window control
package. PCcurses offers the functionality of UNIX curses, plus some
extras. Normally it should be possible to port curses-based programs from
UNIX curses to PCcurses on the IBM PC without changes. PCcurses is a port/
rewrite of Pavel Curtis' public domain 'ncurses' package. All the code has
been re-written - it is not just an edit of ncurses (or UNIX curses). I
mention this to clarify any copyright violation claims. The data structures
and ideas are very similar to ncurses. As for UNIX curses, I have not even
seen any sources for it.

 For an introduction to the use of 'curses' and it's derivatives, you
should read 'Screen Updating and Cursor Movement Optimization: A Library
Package' by Kenneth C. R. C. Arnold, which describes the original Berkely
UNIX version of curses. It is available as part of the UNIX manuals. The
other source of information is 'The Ncurses Reference Manual' by Pavel
Curtis. The latter is part of Curtis' ncurses package.

  The only other documentation provided is a 'man' page which describes all
the included functions in a very terse way. In the sources, each function
is preceded by a rather thourough description of what the function does. I
didn't have time to write a nice manual/tutorial - sorry.

  PCcurses is released as a number of source files, a man page, and a make
file. A uuencoded copy of a 'make' utility, and a manpage for the 'make' is
also provided to make it easier to put together PCcurses libraries. Even if
you are not interested in PCcurses, it may be worthwhile to grab the make.

  The makefile assumes the presence of the MicroSoft 'C' compiler (3.0 or
4.0), MicroSoft MASM and LIB, plus some MS-DOS utilities. The reason for
supplying MAKE.EXE is that the MicroSoft 'MAKE:s' are much inferior to a
real UNIX make. The supplied make is a port of a public domain make,
published on UseNet. It is almost completely compatible with UNIX make.
When generating the curses libraries, the makefile will direct make to do
some directory creating and file copying, and then re-invoke itself with
new targets. The workings of the makefile are not absolutely crystal clear
at first sight... just start it and see what it does.

  For portability, the curses libraries depend on one assembler file for
access to the BIOS routines. There is no support for the EGA, but both CGA,
MGA, and the HGA can be used. The libraries are originally for MicroSoft
'C', but all C modules should be portable right away. In the assembler
file, segment names probably need to be changed, and possibly the parameter
passing scheme. I think Turbo C will work right away - as far as I
understand, all it's conventions are compatible with MicroSoft C.

  There are some parts left out between ncurses and PCcurses. One is the
support for multiple terminals - not very interesting on a PC anyway.
Because we KNOW what terminal we have, there is no need for a termcap or
termio library. PCcurses also has some things that neither curses nor
ncurses have. Compared to the original UNIX curses, PCcurses has lots of
extras.

  The BIOS routines are used directly, which gives fast screen updates.
PCcurses does not do direct writes to screen RAM - in my opinion it is a
bit ugly to rely that much on hardware compatibility. Anyone could fix
that, of course...

  One of the more serious problems with PCcurses is the way in which
normal, cbreak, and raw input modes are done. All those details are in the
'charget' module - I do raw I/O via the BIOS, and perform any buffering
myself. If an application program uses PCcurses, it should do ALL it's I/O
via PCcurses calls, otherwise the mix of normal and PCcurses I/O may mess
up the display. I think my code is reasonable... comments are welcome,
provided you express them nicely...

  To install, copy all files to a work directory, edit 'makefile' to define
the standard include and library file directory names of your choice (these
directories must exist already, and their path names must be relative to
the root directory, not to the current one). You must also run uudecode on
make.uu, to generate MAKE.EXE. You can do that on your PC, if you have
uudecode there, otherwise you can do it under UNIX and do a binary transfer
to the PC. When you have MAKE.EXE in your work directory (or in your /bin
directory), type make.

  Make will now create 4 sub-directories (one for each memory model), copy
some assembler include files into them, copy two include files to your
include directory, CHDIR to each sub-directory and re-invoke itself with
other make targets to compile and assemble all the source files into the
appropriate directories. Then the library manager is run to create the
library files in your desired library directory. Presto!

  If you only want to generate a library for one memory model, type 'make
small', 'make large', etc. The name of the memory model must be in lower
case, like in the makefile.

  I think the package is fairly well debugged - but then again, that's what
I always think. It was completed in May-87, and no problems found yet. Now
it's your turn... Comments, suggestions and bug reports and fixes (no
flames please) to

Bjorn Larsson
INFOVOX AB
Box 2503                      ([e-mail])
S-171 02 Solna
SWEDEN