Subject: Re: wscons termcap entry
To: None <tech-userlevel@netbsd.org>
From: Jason R Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 07/03/2002 17:34:14
On Wed, Jul 03, 2002 at 10:31:00PM +0200, Joerg Klemenz wrote:

 >        This  implementation  is  ``new
 >        curses'' (ncurses) and is  the  approved  replacement  for
 >        4.4BSD classic curses, which has been discontinued.
 > 		-- ncurses man page
 > 
 > Thomas Dickey told me he left some of E. Raymods statements in the
 > docs because he found it "amusing" but you cannot disregard the fact
 > that BSD curses is really really old and - accoring to Dickey - incomplete
 > and buggy.

NetBSD does not use the classical BSD curses.  It uses an updated curses
library, developed by a couple of NetBSD developers, which has all the
capabilities of a modern curses, an accompanying libform and libmenu, etc.

We're generally quite happy of this every time there is a well-publicized
ncurses bug.

It also uses termcap, which is inherently extensible, while terminfo is
not.  We got a lot of pushback from our Japanese user and developer base
against terminfo, because terminfo would make it harder for them to add
the types of terminal capabilities they want for internationalization
support.

-- 
        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>