From xemacs-m  Thu May 29 05:57:27 1997
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Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 03:56:29 -0700
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From: Martin Buchholz <mrb@Eng.Sun.COM>
To: friedman@splode.com
Cc: xemacs-beta@xemacs.org
Subject: Re: -lcurses vs -ltermlib vs -ltermcap
In-Reply-To: <199705261936.MAA04980@piglet.splode.com>
References: <199705210837.BAA14852@xemacs.eng.sun.com>
	<cognot@ensg.u-nancy.fr>
	<199705261936.MAA04980@piglet.splode.com>
X-Mailer: VM 6.31 under 20.3 XEmacs Lucid (beta2)
Reply-To: Martin Buchholz <mrb@Eng.Sun.COM>

>>>>> "Noah" == Noah Friedman <friedman@splode.com> writes:

Noah> I don't know how many people are likely to agree with me, but I think
Noah> ncurses really sucks; especially 4.1.  It doesn't like some of the
Noah> specialized entries I have in my termcap files that are recognized by
Noah> programs like `screen', or (as far as I can tell) emacs's special
Noah> recognition of the `cS' entry for setting scrolling regions on Ann Arbor
Noah> Ambassadors (of which, as some of you may already know, I am a religious
Noah> devotee).

Noah> All this is bad enough, but then instead of just ignoring the entries it
Noah> doesn't recognize, ncurses complains about them to stderr and then aborts
Noah> my programs!
 
Noah> So I've just given up on ncurses.  I link xemacs with GNU termcap instead,
Noah> which currently requires editing the Makefile by hand after running
Noah> configure.  There's nothing terminfo buys me that I can't already do with
Noah> termcap.  Quite the opposite seems to be true.

I just noticed that building on Solaris with ncurses produces an
XEmacs that doesn't run on tty's, so at first glance I am inclined to
share Noah's opinion.  Why are we autodetecting ncurses, if it doesn't 
buy us anything?  Who put in ncurses support anyways?

Noah, if you "upgrade" to 20.3 beta, you will be able to enjoy the
--with-ncurses=no option.

Martin

