Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 12:38:34 +0200
From: kunst AT prl DOT philips DOT nl (Pieter Kunst)
Subject: curses endwin() bug and patch
Reply-To: kunst AT prl DOT philips DOT nl
To: dj AT ctron DOT com
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu

Hello DJ,

Perhaps I'm a bit old-fashioned for still using 'curses' nowadays while 
everybody is talking about the latest GUIs like DV/X and the like...
A while ago I posted a question about using the arrow keys with the
'curses' library from the contrib section. I didn't get any reply, so 
I assume that not many people use 'curses' for their terminal I/O.
I need it however for portability reasons.

The questions I had have been resolved for the greatest part: most of
them (e.g. arrow keys) have to do with the differences between the
BSD 4.3 and the System V implementation of the 'curses' library, so
it looks like the 'curses' library isn't so portable at all...

One annoying property of the 'curses' version in the contrib section
is a very small bug in the 'endwin()' function which tries to restore
the original screen (before curses was activated). Somewhere down the 
code the parameters in the puttext() and gettext() (from gppconio.c) 
have been reversed. I include a patch at the end of this message. 

I have found some other non-portabilities (even for a BSD 4.3 curses)
which I will post later. If more people are interested I can put my
System V patches in a separate file to be included with new releases
of 'curses'.

Pieter Kunst (kunst AT prl DOT philips DOT nl)

------------------ contrib/curses/src/cvidintf.c diff ---------------------

*** cvidintf.org	Wed Sep  9 12:14:38 1992
--- cvidintf.c	Wed Sep  9 12:15:21 1992
***************
*** 295,301 ****
      movblock(__VIDADDR.farptr, savep, VID_BUFF_SIZE);
  #endif  /* AZTEC */
  #ifdef __GNUC__
!     gettext(1, 1, 25, 80, savep);
  #endif
      vid_get_curs_info(&buffp->c_posn, &buffp->c_size);
  }
--- 295,301 ----
      movblock(__VIDADDR.farptr, savep, VID_BUFF_SIZE);
  #endif  /* AZTEC */
  #ifdef __GNUC__
!     gettext(1, 1, 80, 25, savep);
  #endif
      vid_get_curs_info(&buffp->c_posn, &buffp->c_size);
  }
***************
*** 322,328 ****
      movblock(savep, __VIDADDR.farptr, VID_BUFF_SIZE);
  #endif  /* AZTEC */
  #ifdef __GNUC__
!     puttext(1, 1, 25, 80, savep);
  #endif
      vid_set_curs_info(&buffp->c_posn, &buffp->c_size);
  }
--- 322,328 ----
      movblock(savep, __VIDADDR.farptr, VID_BUFF_SIZE);
  #endif  /* AZTEC */
  #ifdef __GNUC__
!     puttext(1, 1, 80, 25, savep);
  #endif
      vid_set_curs_info(&buffp->c_posn, &buffp->c_size);
  }