Subj : ncurses
To   : Maurice Kinal
From : Nicholas Boel
Date : Mon Sep 11 2017 16:29:46

Hello Maurice,

On Mon Sep 11 2017 01:55:20, Maurice Kinal wrote to Nicholas Boel:

 MK> Ah yes!  Now I remember.  Also noticed that sometimes the vga colours
 MK> (color) weren't quite right for whatever reason.  I still see that in
 MK> a few apps that require ncurses but still use straight ascii
 MK> characters such as msged.  I'll have a looksee soon and see if that
 MK> rears it's ugly head.

The latest version on github is now ncurses-6.0+20170909-1 but isn't in the 
Archlinux repos yet. I downgraded from ncurses-6.0+20170902-1 back to 
ncurses-6.0+20170527-1 and everything is back to normal. So somewhere in a 
version between those (there was at least a few) or 0902 is the culprit. I've 
blocked my package manager from upgrading any further until the next version is 
out to test.

 NB>> My BBS software's configuration program also uses ncurses, and
 NB>> looks pretty bad there too.

 MK> Same thing with older kernel source's 'menuconfig' app except the
 MK> kernel people were on top of that issue quite quickly and had a fix
 MK> for it.  I am betting whatever fix they applied to that function might
 MK> be a fix for your issue(s).  The golded one is a tad more involved
 MK> since they don't allow for WIDEC which is now the default in ncurses.
 MK> In 5.9 the distributions were providing both the WIDEC (eg libncursesw
 MK> and libncurses) whereas now I only see libncursesw.  Mind you the
 MK> version I have onboard was built by nyself and I never bothered with
 MK> non-WIDEC and haven't for ages now.

Golded does indeed have a compile option for wide ncurses support which I use 
here when building, but who knows how long ago that was implemented. However, 
I'd be interested in knowing what the kernel people did for the menuconfig app, 
as I'm fairly certain I just read somewhere that ncurses made some changes 
recently that required other software to change something - if something was 
originally done wrong (ie: mixing printf and printw or something in those 
lines).

Who knows. It's working again with a bit lesser of a version so I'm not too 
worried about it at the moment, and at least someone else has seen the issue 
and I'm not crazy (at least in this specific case, anyways). ;)

Archlinux IRC I get responses like:

Them: "I haven't seen any issues with ncurses. But have you tried a different 
emulator?"

Me: "I didn't mention anything about X, or any window manager, or even anything 
like Xterm, etc. Why would you think I was using a terminal emulator? I'm in a 
TTY console."

Them: "My bad."

<shaking my head>

Regards,
Nick

.... "Не знаю. Я здесь только работаю."
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20170303
 * Origin: thePharcyde_ distribution system (Wisconsin) (1:154/10)

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