[TUHS] Re: Was curses ported to Seventh Edition Unix?

[Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>]

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Ken was working in Ing70 [he was part of the Ingres group] - IngVax did not
yet exist,
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On Sat, May 25, 2024 at 11:57 AM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Clem,
>
> At 2024-05-25T11:40:13-0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> > It was never needed to be ported -- it was developed on V7.
> > It was released in comp.sources.unix volume1 as pcurses
>
> This bit conflicts with other accounts.  Here's what I have in draft.
>
> HISTORY
>      4BSD (1980) introduced curses, implemented largely by Kenneth
>      C. R. C. Arnold, who organized the terminal abstraction and screen
>      management features of Bill Joy’s vi(1) editor into a library.
>      That system ran only on the VAX architecture; curses saw a port to
>      2.9BSD (1983) for the PDP‐11.
>
>      System V Release 2 (SVr2, 1984) significantly revised curses and
>      replaced the termcap portion thereof with a different API for
>      terminal handling, terminfo.  System V added form and menu
>      libraries in SVr3 (1987) and enhanced curses with color support in
>      SVr3.2 later the same year.  SVr4 (1989) brought the panel library.
>
> pcurses by distinction was, by the accounts I have, a later effort by
> Pavel Curtis to clone SVr2 curses by taking BSD curses and replacing its
> termcap bits with a reimplementation terminfo.  This was apparently done
> for licensing reasons, as BSD code was free ("as in freedom") and System
> V certainly was not.
>
> The pcurses 0.7 tarball I have contains a document, doc/manual.tbl.ms,
> which starts as follows.  Note the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs.
>
> .po +.5i
> .TL
> The Curses Reference Manual
> .AU
> Pavel Curtis
> .NH
> Introduction
> .LP
> Terminfo is a database describing many capabilities of over 150
> different terminals.  Curses is a subroutine package which
> presents a high level screen model to the programmer, while
> dealing with issues such as terminal differences and optimization of
> output to change one screenfull of text into another.
> .LP
> Terminfo is based on Berkeley's termcap database, but contains a
> number of improvements and extensions.  Parameterized strings are
> introduced, making it possible to describe such capabilities as
> video attributes, and to handle far more unusual terminals than
> possible with termcap.
> .LP
> Curses is also based on Berkeley's curses package, with many
> improvements.  The package makes use of the insert and delete
> line and character features of terminals so equipped, and
> determines how to optimally use these features with no help from the
> programmer.  It allows arbitrary combinations of video attributes
> to be displayed, even on terminals that leave ``magic cookies''
> on the screen to mark changes in attributes.
>
> > That said, I believe late volumes have nervous updates.
>
> I'm gathering data for another paragraph of that "History" section now.
> The long and short of it seems to be that:
>
> BSD curses, besides getting ported to many platforms, begat pcurses.
>
> pcurses begat PCCurses, PDCurses, and ncurses.
>
> PCCurses died.
>
> PDCurses went dormant, begat PDCursesMod, and roused from its slumber.
>
> ncurses, after a long period of erratic early administration that seemed
> more concerned with seizing celebrity status for its developers (one of
> whom was more single-minded and successful at this goal than the other)
> than with software development, has been maintained with a steady hand
> over 25 years.
>
> There also exists NetBSD curses, which wasn't developed ex nihilo but
> I'm not sure yet what origin it forked from.
>
> Regards,
> Branden
>

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