The tecla library release notes

    This file lists major changes which accompany each new release.

    Version 1.4.0:

      The contents of the history list can now be saved and restored with
      the new gl_save_history() and gl_load_history() functions.

      Event handlers can now be registered to watch for and respond to I/O
      on arbitrary file descriptors while gl_get_line() is waiting for
      terminal input from the user. See the gl_get_line(3) man page
      for details on gl_watch_fd().

      As an optional alternative to getting configuration information only
      from ~/.teclarc, the new gl_configure_getline() function allows
      configuration commands to be taken from any of, a string, a
      specified application-specific file, and/or a specified
      user-specific file. See the gl_get_line(3) man page for details.

      The version number of the library can now be queried using the
      libtecla_version() function. See the libtecla(3) man page.

      The new gl_group_history() function allows applications to group
      different types of input line in the history buffer, and arrange for
      only members of the appropriate group to be recalled on a given call
      to gl_get_line(). See the gl_get_line(3) man page.

      The new gl_show_history() function displays the current history list
      to a given stdio output stream. See the gl_get_line(3) man page.

      new_GetLine() now allows you to specify a history buffer size of
      zero, thus requesting that no history buffer be allocated. You can
      subsequently resize or delete the history buffer at any time, by
      calling gl_resize_history(), limit the number of lines that are
      allowed in the buffer by calling gl_limit_history(), clear either
      all history lines from the history list, or just the history lines
      that are associated with the current history group, by calling
      gl_clear_history, and toggle the history mechanism on and off by
      calling gl_toggle_history().

      The new gl_terminal_size() function can be used to query the
      current terminal size. It can also be used to supply a default
      terminal size on systems where no mechanism is available for
      looking up the size.

      The contents and configuration of the history list can now be
      obtained by the calling application, by calling the new
      gl_lookup_history(), gl_state_of_history(), gl_range_of_history()
      and gl_size_of_history() functions. See the gl_get_line(3) man page.

      Echoing of the input line as it is typed, can now be turned on and
      off via the new gl_echo_mode() function. While echoing is disabled,
      newly entered input lines are omitted from the history list.  See
      the gl_get_line(3) man page.

      While the default remains to display the prompt string literally,
      the new gl_prompt_style() function can be used to enable text
      attribute formatting directives in prompt strings, such as
      underlining, bold font, and highlighting directives.

      Signal handling in gl_get_line() is now customizable. The default
      signal handling behavior remains essentially the same, except that
      the SIGTSTP, SIGTTIN and SIGTTOU are now forwarded to the
      corresponding signal handler of the calling program, instead of
      causing a SIGSTOP to be sent to the application.  It is now possible
      to remove signals from the list that are trapped by gl_get_line(),
      as well as add new signals to this list. The signal and terminal
      environments in which the signal handler of the calling program is
      invoked, and what gl_get_line() does after the signal handler
      returns, is now customizable on a per signal basis. You can now also
      query the last signal that was caught by gl_get_line(). This is
      useful when gl_get_line() aborts with errno=EINTR, and you need to
      know which signal caused it to abort.

      Key-sequences bound to action functions can now start with printable
      characters. Previously only keysequences starting with control or
      meta characters were permitted.

      gl_get_line() is now 8-bit clean. If the calling program has
      correctly called setlocale(LC_CTYPE,""), then the user can select an
      alternate locale by setting the standard LC_CTYPE, LC_ALL, or LANG
      environment variables, and international characters can then be
      entered directly, either by using a non-US keyboard, or by using a
      compose key on a standard US keyboard. Note that in locales in which
      meta characters become printable, meta characters no longer match
      M-c bindings, which then have to be entered using their escape-c
      equivalents.  Fortunately most modern terminal emulators either
      output the escape-c version by default when the meta key is used, or
      can be configured to do so (see the gl_get_line(3) man page), so in
      most cases you can continue to use the meta key.

      Completion callback functions can now tell gl_get_line() to return
      the input line immediately after a successful tab completion, simply
      by setting the last character of the optional continuation suffix to
      a newline character (ie. in the call to cpl_add_completion()).

      It is now safe to create and use multiple GetLine objects, albeit
      still only from a single thread. In conjunction with the new
      gl_configure_getline() function, this optionally allows multiple
      GetLine objects with different bindings to be used to implement
      different input modes.

      The edit-mode configuration command now accepts the argument,
      none. This tells gl_get_line() to revert to using just the native
      line editing facilities provided by the terminal driver. This could
      be used if the termcap or terminfo entry of the host terminal were
      badly corrupted.

      Application callback functions invoked by gl_get_line() can now
      change the displayed prompt using the gl_replace_prompt() function.

      Their is now an optional program distributed with the library. This
      is a beta release of a program which adds tecla command-line editing
      to virtually any third party application without the application
      needing to be linked to the library. See the enhance(3) man page for
      further details. Although built and installed by default, the
      INSTALL document explains how to prevent this.

      The INSTALL document now explains how you can stop the demo programs
      from being built and installed.

      NetBSD/termcap fixes. Mike MacFaden reported two problems that he
      saw when compiling libtecla under NetBSD. Both cases were related to
      the use of termcap.  Most systems use terminfo, so this problem has
      gone unnoticed until now, and won't have affected the grand majority
      of users.  The configure script had a bug which prevented the check
      for CPP working properly, and getline.c wouldn't compile due to an
      undeclared variable when USE_TERMCAP was defined. Both problems have
      now been fixed. Note that if you successfully compiled version
      1.3.3, this problem didn't affect you.

      An unfortunate and undocumented binding of the key-sequence M-O was
      shadowing the arrow-key bindings on systems that use ^[OA etc. I
      have removed this binding (the documented lower case M-o binding
      remains bound). Under the KDE konsole terminal this was causing the
      arrow keys to do something other than expected.

      There was a bug in the history list code which could result in
      strange entries appearing at the start of the history list once
      enough history lines had been added to the list to cause the
      circular history buffer to wrap. This is now fixed.

    Version 1.3.3:

      Signal handling has been re-written, and documentation of its
      behaviour has been added to the gl_get_line(3) man page. In addition
      to eliminating race conditions, and appropriately setting errno for
      those signals that abort gl_get_line(), many more signals are now
      intercepted, making it less likely that the terminal will be left in
      raw mode by a signal that isn't trapped by gl_get_line().

      A bug was also fixed that was leaving the terminal in raw mode if
      the editing mode was changed interactively between vi and emacs.
      This was only noticeable when running programs from old shells that
      don't reset terminal modes.

    Version 1.3.2:

      Tim Eliseo contributed a number of improvements to vi mode,
      including a fuller set of vi key-bindings, implementation of the vi
      constraint that the cursor can't backup past the point at which
      input mode was entered, and restoration of overwritten characters
      when backspacing in overwrite mode. There are also now new bindings
      to allow users to toggle between vi and emacs modes interactively.
      The terminal bell is now used in some circumstances, such as when an
      unrecognized key sequence is entered. This can be turned off by the
      new nobeep option in the tecla configuration file.

      Unrelated to the above, a problem under Linux which prevented ^Q
      from being used to resume terminal output after the user had pressed
      ^S, has been fixed.

    Version 1.3.1:

      In vi mode a bug was preventing the history-search-backward and
      history-search-forward actions from doing anything when invoked on
      empty lines. On empty lines they now act like up-history and
      down-history respectively, as in emacs mode.

      When creating shared libraries under Linux, the -soname directive
      was being used incorrectly. The result is that Linux binaries linked
      with the 1.2.3, 1.2.4 and 1.3.0 versions of the tecla shared
      libraries, will refuse to see other versions of the shared library
      until relinked with version 1.3.1 or higher.

      The configure script can now handle the fact that under Solaris-2.6
      and earlier, the only curses library is a static one that hides in
      /usr/ccs/lib. Under Linux it now also caters for old versions of GNU
      ld which don't accept version scripts.

      The demos are now linked against the shared version of the library
      if possible. Previously they were always linked with the static
      version.

    Version 1.3.0:

      The major change in this release is the addition of an optional vi
      command-line editing mode in gl_get_line(), along with lots of new
      action functions to support its bindings. To enable this, first
      create a ~/.teclarc file if you don't already have one, then add the
      following line to it.

       edit-mode vi

      The default vi bindings, which are designed to mimic those of the vi
      editor as closely as possible, are described in the gl_get_line(3)
      man page.

      A new convenience function called ef_list_expansions() has been
      added for listing filename expansions. See the ef_list_expansions(3)
      man page for details. This is used in a new list-glob binding, bound
      to ^Xg in emacs mode, and ^G in vi input mode.

      A bug has been fixed in the key-binding table expansion code. This
      bug would have caused problems to anybody who defined more than
      about 18 personalized key-bindings in their ~/.teclarc file.

    Version 1.2.4:

      Buffered I/O is now used for writing to terminals, and where
      supported, cursor motion is done with move-n-positions terminfo
      capabilities instead of doing lots of move-1-position requests. This
      greatly improves how the library feels over slow links.

      You can now optionally compile different architectures in different
      directories, without having to make multiple copies of the
      distribution. This is documented in the INSTALL file.

      The ksh ~+ directive is now supported.

      Thanks to Markus Gyger for the above improvements.

      Documentation has been added to the INSTALL file describing features
      designed to facilitate configuration and installation of the library
      as part of larger packages. These features are intended to remove
      the need to modify the tecla distribution's configuration and build
      procedures when embedding the libtecla distribution in other package
      distributions.

      A previous fix to stop the cursor from warping when the last
      character of the input line was in the last column of the terminal,
      was only being used for the first terminal line of the input line.
      It is now used for all subsequent lines as well, as originally
      intended.

    Version 1.2.3:

      The installation procedure has been better automated with the
      addition of an autoconf configure script. This means that installers
      can now compile and install the library by typing:

        ./configure
        make
        make install

      On all systems this makes at least the normal static version of the
      tecla library. It also makes the reentrant version if reentrant
      POSIX functions are detected.  Under Solaris, Linux and HP-UX the
      configuration script arranges for shared libraries to be compiled in
      addition to the static libraries.  It is hoped that installers will
      return information about how to compile shared libraries on other
      systems, for inclusion in future releases, and to this end, a new
      PORTING guide has been provided.

      The versioning number scheme has been changed. This release would
      have been 1.2c, but instead will be refered to as 1.2.3. The
      versioning scheme, based on conventions used by Sun Microsystems, is
      described in configure.in.

      The library was also tested under HP-UX, and this revealed two
      serious bugs, both of which have now been fixed.

      The first bug prevented the library from writing control codes to
      terminals on big-endian machines, with the exception of those
      running under Solaris. This was due to an int variable being used
      where a char was needed.

      The second bug had the symptom that on systems that don't use the
      newline character as the control code for moving the cursor down a
      line, a newline wasn't started when the user hit enter.

    Version 1.2b:

      Two more minor bug fixes:

      Many terminals don't wrap the cursor to the next line when a
      character is written to the rightmost terminal column. Instead, they
      delay starting a new line until one more character is written, at
      which point they move the cursor two positions.  gl_get_line()
      wasn't aware of this, so cursor repositionings just after writing
      the last character of a column, caused it to erroneously go up a
      line. This has now been remedied, using a method that should work
      regardless of whether a terminal exhibits this behavior or not.

      Some systems dynamically record the current terminal dimensions in
      environment variables called LINES and COLUMNS. On such systems,
      during the initial terminal setup, these values should override the
      static values read from the terminal information databases, and now
      do.  Previously they were only used if the dimensions returned by
      terminfo/termcap looked bogus.

    Version 1.2a:

      This minor release fixes the following two bugs:

      The initial terminal size and subsequent changes thereto, weren't
      being noticed by gl_get_line(). This was because the test for the
      existence of TIOCWINSZ was erroneously placed before the inclusion
      of termios.h. One of the results was that on input lines that
      spanned more than one terminal line, the cursor occasionally jumped
      unexpectedly to the previous terminal line.

      On entering a line that wrapped over multiple terminal lines,
      gl_get_line() simply output a carriage-return line-feed at the point
      at which the user pressed return. Thus if one typed in such a line,
      then moved back onto one of the earlier terminal lines before
      hitting return, the cursor was left on a line containing part of the
      line that had just been entered. This didn't do any harm, but it
      looked a mess.

    Version 1.2:

      A new facility for looking up and completing filenames in UNIX-style
      paths has now been added (eg. you can search for, or complete
      commands using the UNIX PATH environment variable). See the
      pca_lookup_file(3) man page.

      The already existing filename completion callback can now be made
      selective in what types of files it lists. See the
      cpl_complete_word(3) man page.

      Due to its potential to break applications when changed, the use of
      the publically defined CplFileArgs structure to configure the
      cpl_file_completions() callback is now deprecated.  The definition
      of this structure has been frozen, and its documentation has been
      removed from the man pages.  It will remain supported, but if you
      have used it, you are recommended to switch to the new method, which
      involves a new opaque configuration object, allocated via a provided
      constructor function, configured via accessor functions, and
      eventually deleted with a provided destructor function. The
      cpl_file_completions() callback distinguishes which structure type
      it has been sent by virtue of a code placed at the start of the new
      structure by the constructor.  It is assumed that no existing
      applications set the boolean 'escaped' member of the CplFileArgs
      structure to 4568.  The new method is documented in the
      cpl_complete_word(3) man page.

    Version 1.1j

      This was the initial public release on freshmeat.org.