• NCURSES — Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
  • What is NCURSES?
  • Who wrote NCURSES?
  • How can it be distributed?
  • Is it Free Software or Open Source?
  • Is it GPL'd?
  • Will it ever be GPL?
  • What about the tack program?
  • What about the terminfo database?
    • Copyright and Licensing
    • Attribution
    • Other Versions
  • How big is it?
    • Growth of the feature set
    • Types of library users
    • Relationship with vi
    • Applications miscited as library users
  • What platforms does it run on?
  • What is the latest version?
  • Official releases
  • What other programs are there?
  • Known/Frequent problems
    • Building and Installing NCURSES
      • How do I run the test-programs?
      • How do I apply patches?
      • Where are the patches?
      • The terminfo database is big—do I need all of that?
      • Do I really need a terminfo database?
      • Which terminfo database do I need?
      • Is ncurses terminfo compatible with my system?
      • Is the ncurses library compatible with my system?
      • Problems with remote shells
      • Problems with Cross-Compiling
    • Configuring NCURSES
      • Do I need all of those programs and libraries?
      • Do I need the C++ binding?
      • Why does make menuconfig fail?
      • Problem building with gcc 2.96.x
      • Problem building C++ interface with gcc 3.x
      • Testing for Memory Leaks
    • Customizing NCURSES
      • How do I set up a private terminfo database?
      • My terminal is not recognized
      • Why use terminfo instead of extensible termcap?
    • Making NCURSES Fast
      • Why does my program scroll slowly?
      • Why does VT100 refresh slowly?
    • Making Color Work
      • How do I get color with VT100?
      • My terminal doesn't recognize color
      • My terminal shows some uncolored spaces
      • My xterm program doesn't recognize color
      • Why doesn't ncurses use $COLORTERM?
      • Why not just use TERM set to "xterm-color"?
      • Why not just use TERM set to "xterm"?
      • Why not make "xterm" equated to "xterm-256color"?
      • Why only 16 (or 256) colors?
      • Ncurses resets my colors to white/black
      • Why are red/blue interchanged?
    • Other Display Problems
      • Line-drawing characters come out as x's and q's
      • Line-drawing characters come out as Latin-1 characters
      • Line-drawing characters do not appear
      • Why does my cursor blink in Emacs?
      • Why does (fill in the blank) happen when I use two threads?
    • Keyboard Problems
      • My cursor keys do not work
      • Alt-keys do not work in bash
      • My home/end keys do not work
      • How can I use shift- or control-modifiers?
      • How can I see what my keyboard sends?
    • Using Hardware (Real) Terminals
      • Why does reset log me out?
      • Why do I get trash on the screen?
    • Interaction with Other Programs
      • Redirecting I/O to/from a Curses application
      • What about readline?
      • Problems with Output Buffering
    • Mice and Windows
      • I can't cut/paste in xterm
      • Handling SIGWINCH (resize events)
      • Linking with GPM (Linux console mouse library)
    • Problems with Packages
      • Comments on packages
      • Ncurses 4/4.2/5.0
      • rxvt's $COLORFGBG variable
    • Where is rxvt-unicode?
  • How do I report bugs?
    • How should I report bugs?
    • How do I report problems building ncurses?
    • Updates to terminal database
    • Why aren't my bugs being fixed?
    • How are patches organized?
  • POSIX Compliant?
  • Y2K Compliant?
  • Terminology
  • Additional Reading
    • For reference:
    • Dead trees:
    • Language bindings:
    • Other implementations:
    • Related applications:
    • Technically obsolete, but often cited:
    • Interesting but misleading:
  • Copyright