= Ncurses =

== Description ==

Ncurses (new curses, pronounced "enn-curses") started as a freely
distributable "clone" of System V Release 4.0 (SVr4) curses. It has
outgrown the "clone" description, and now contains many features which
are not in SVr4 curses. Curses is a pun on the term "cursor
optimization". It is a library of functions that manage an
application's display on character-cell terminals (e.g., VT100).

The name "ncurses" was first used as the name of the curses library in
Pavel Curtis's pcurses, dated 1982. It was apparently developed on a
BSD 4.4 system, at Cornell. Parts of pcurses are readily identifiable
in ncurses, including the basics for the terminfo compiler (named
compile in that package):

  * the Caps, used to define the terminfo capabilities
  * awk scripts MKcaptab.awk, MKnames.awk
  * the library modules used for the terminfo compiler.

Besides ncurses, parts of pcurses still survive in 2010, in
recognizable form in Solaris.

Website: http://invisible-island.net/ncurses

== License ==

 * MIT-style

== Upstream Contact ==

 * bug-ncurses@gnu.org

== Dependencies ==

None

== Special Update/Build Instructions ==

=== Patches ===

 * xopen_source.patch: remove harmful check from aclocal.m4 which may
   reintroduce XOPEN_SOURCE on systems where it should not be used.

