Date:	Mon, 25 Jan 93 16:24:23 -0500
From:	jshumate AT wrdis01 DOT robins DOT af DOT mil ( Shumate Jason;WR-ALC/DSMDC)
Subject:	PD Curses 2.0 and GAS docs
To:	djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu

    I have uploaded to math.niu.edu pdcurlib.zip in the directory
/pub/msdos/djgpp.stuff/contrib.  This is the PD Curses 2.0 library which
was compiled thanks to David Nugent's patches.  It was compiled using the
-O2 flag.  If you don't want to spend a long time compiling it yourself
(it took me 1 and 1/2 hours), you might want to get it.  You probably should
get the source code to PD Curses 2.0 which can be found at:
    wsmr-simtel20.army.mil in <MSDOS.SCREEN>
or at various simtel20 mirror sites.  Also, in the same directory at
math.niu.edu, I have uploaded the documents for GAS, which strangely enough
are not part of the official distribution, and a file, i386-as, which is
a discussion of upgrading the Xenix 286 assembler to a UNIX 386 assembler.
It discusses the differences between MASM and UNIX as syntax, so it might be
useful to many people who beg for help in this area.
    I have passed on David's patches to PD Curses, and I would expect that
they will become part of the 2.1 release, whenever that is.  I had a previous
discussion with Mark Hessling, one of the maintainers, about supporting 
DJGPP, and he was very open to it.  The more compilers it worked for, the
better.  I had hoped to do the port myself, but I had quite a few problems.
It was interesting to see how David got things to work.
    For those of you who don't know, here is a short discussion of PD Curses.
The original package was PC Curses, which was started in 1986 with version 1.0
by Bjorn Larsson in Sweden.  Several people contributed to the package over
the years, and in 1990, version 1.4 was released.  This release seemed to be
a good implementation of AT&T and Berkeley curses, but it lacked color
support, among other things.  It also had the drawback of only working when
compiled with Microsoft C and required you to have an assembler for one
module of code Bjorn couldn't get to work in C (these were the days when 
Microsoft C did not support inline assembly language).  Sadly, Bjorn died
sometime after releasing version 1.4 (I don't know when he died, or how, so
don't ask).  In late 1991, a guy in Australia patched PC Curses 1.3 to handle
color.  John Fa'atuai incorporated these patches and some others and rewrote
PC Curses to be compilable under a wider range of compilers than just
Microsoft (you wouldn't believe how many people couldn't use PC Curses
because it never worked right with Turbo C).  John had to give up maintaining
the code, and when it was released after some testing, it was renamed 
PD Curses.  This is a very good package and offers good AT&T curses support
to those who need it.  Let's face it, Berkeley curses just aren't as good as
the AT&T package.  I am glad I was able to contibute a small amount of code
to PD Curses and I heartily recommend it to all DJGPP users.  I will add that
PD Curses may become THE curses package for the GNU project in the future.
There has been some discussion to this end, so you really can't go wrong by
getting familiar with it now.  This post should in no way be meant to reflect
negatively on Alan Etheridge's curses library, but many people may find this
to be a more useful package.
CUL8R, Jason Shumate                 | "Close, but no doughnut cops!" -
Sys. Admin. on another machine,      |  bad guy to Springfield police as   
just another punk user on this one   |  they raid the wrong house.       
jshumate AT wrdis01 DOT robins DOT af DOT mil       | "I have a vision - television!" - Bono

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