Ncurses

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The correct title of this article is ncurses. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

ncurses

Developer:	GNU Project
Latest release:	5.6 / December 23, 2006
OS:	POSIX
Use:	Widget toolkit
License:	MIT
Website:	www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html

ncurses is a programming library providing an API, allowing the programmer to write text user interfaces in a terminal-independent manner. It also optimizes screen changes, in order to reduce the latency experienced when using remote shells.

Ncurses stands for "new curses", and is a replacement for the discontinued 4.4 BSD classic curses. Most ncurses calls can be easily ported to the old curses; however, a few areas are problematic, such as handling terminal resizing. Other subtle differences in call semantics can make porting an ncurses application to commercial Unix somewhat difficult.

The project lead is Thomas Dickey.

Ncurses is a part of the GNU project. It is one of the few GNU files not distributed under the GNU GPL or LGPL; it is distributed under a permissive free software licence, similar to the MIT License.

[edit] See also

Free software Portal

Curses Development Kit The extended library of curses widgets maintained by Thomas Dickey.
Curses Development Kit The original open source library of ncurses widgets developed by Mike Glover (at Vexus).
SMG$ The Screen Management library available under OpenVMS. Similar idea to ncurses, yet different library and implementation.
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