Re: [Bug-readline] Comment on c612c3607b183ae654d6c920c729de5444fdb899 (commit readline-20190906)

[Chet Ramey]

On 9/16/19 11:56 AM, Osipov, Michael wrote:


> This is a pretty good argument for my beloved BSD. Accepted. Comment revoked.

The history is interesting.

Bill Joy wrote the original termcap functions and compiled the initial
termcap file as part of his original vi. Joy and Ken Arnold broke the
termcap functions out into a separate library as part of Arnold's work to
develop the first version of curses (which he in turn had developed to
support the game rogue).

Mary Ann Horton eventually took over the termcap library and database
(well, not really a database -- just the /etc/termcap file, which on BSD
could also be installed as a dbm database), and took it with her when she
moved from Berkeley to AT&T Columbus, where she evolved the library and
developed the terminfo terminal description format and the terminfo
database. This was released as System V Release 2 curses.

That never really caught on in the BSD community, because the source wasn't
available.

The curses/termcap version we all use today is ncurses, which is an open
source reimplementation of the System V curses. It's been under development
since the 1980s. I think Thomas Dickey still maintains it.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    address@hidden    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/