Editing Ncurses (section)

==History==
As the new version, ncurses is a [[free and open-source software]] emulation of the System V Release 4.0 (SVr4) [[curses (programming library)|curses]], which was an enhancement over the discontinued 4.4 BSD curses.<ref name="ncurses Raymond"/> The XSI Curses standard issued by [[X/Open]] is explicitly and closely modeled on [[UNIX System V]].

===curses===
{{Main|Curses (programming library)}}
The first curses library was developed at the University of California at Berkeley, for a [[BSD]] operating system, around 1980 to support [[Rogue (video game)|Rogue]], a text-based adventure game. It originally used the [[termcap]] library, which was used in other programs, such as the [[Vi (text editor)|vi]] editor.<ref name="ncurses Raymond">{{cite magazine
 |last1=Raymond |first1=Eric S. |author1-link=Eric S. Raymond
 |date=September 1995
 |url=http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/1124
 |title=ncurses: Portable Screen-Handling for Linux
 |magazine=Linux Journal
}}</ref>

The success of the BSD curses library prompted [[Bell Labs]] to release an enhanced curses library in their System V Release 2 [[Unix]] systems. This library was more powerful and instead of using termcap, it used [[terminfo]]. However, due to [[AT&T Corporation|AT&T]]'s policy regarding the distribution of source code, the improved curses library was not widely adopted in the BSD community.<ref name="ncurses Raymond"/>

===pcurses===
Around 1982, [[Pavel Curtis]] started work on a [[freeware]] clone of the Bell Labs curses, named '''pcurses''', which was maintained by various people through 1986.<ref name="ncurses Dickey">{{Cite web
 |last=Dickey |first=Thomas E.
 |date=December 1996
 |url=http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/
 |title=NCURSES - New Curses
}}</ref>

===ncurses===
The pcurses library was further improved when Zeyd Ben-Halim took over the development effort in late 1991.<ref name="ncurses Raymond"/><ref name="ncurses Dickey"/><ref>The [[README]] file in ncurses 1.8.1 states "v0.1 July 31, 1992" and "v1.8.1 November 5, 1993", which agrees with the [http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.gz NEWS (changelog) file]</ref> The new library was released as ncurses in November 1993, with version 1.8.1 as the first major release. Subsequent work, through version 1.8.8 (M1995), was driven by [[Eric S. Raymond]], who added the form and menu libraries written by Juergen Pfeifer.<ref name=":0">{{cite web |url=http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#who_did_it |title=NCURSES - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): Who wrote NCURSES?}}</ref> Since 1996, it has been maintained by Thomas E. Dickey.<ref name="ncurses Dickey"/>

Most ncurses calls can be easily ported to the old curses. System V curses implementations can support BSD curses programs with just a [[Compiler|recompilation]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/hackguide.html#abstract |title=A Hacker's Guide to Ncurses Internals}}</ref> However, a few areas are problematic, such as handling terminal resizing, since no counterpart exists in the old curses.