Mantis - ncurses
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ID: Category: Severity: Reproducibility: Date Submitted: Last Update:
3457 other feature have not tried 2009-03-05 23:01 2009-03-31 23:36
Reporter: skayser Platform:  
Assigned To: dam OS:  
Priority: normal OS Version:  
Status: closed Product Version:  
Product Build: Resolution: fixed  
Projection: none      
ETA: none Fixed in Version:  
Summary: 0003457: Ncurses lacks wide character support
Description: Just wanted to build nano 2.0.9 against ncurses and using mGARv2

  ./configure $(DIRPATHS) --enable-all

complains:

configure: WARNING:
*** Insufficient UTF-8 support was detected in your curses and/or C
*** libraries. If you want UTF-8 support, please verify that your slang
*** was built with UTF-8 support or your curses was built with wide
*** character support, and that your C library was built with wide
*** character support.

From having a look at the ncurses README --enable-widec does seem to contain some caveats. Filing this as a feature request.
Steps To Reproduce:
Additional Information: $ pkginfo -x CSWncurses
CSWncurses ncurses - ncurses library and utilities
                (sparc) 5.7,REV=2009.01.12
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Attached Files:
Issue History
Date Modified Username Field Change
2009-03-05 23:01 skayser New Issue
2009-03-20 17:42 skayser Note Added: 0005684
2009-03-26 15:51 dam Status new => assigned
2009-03-26 15:51 dam Assigned To => dam
2009-03-31 23:35 dam Note Added: 0005806
2009-03-31 23:35 dam Status assigned => closed
2009-03-31 23:36 dam Resolution open => fixed

Notes
(0005684)
skayser   
2009-03-20 17:42   
I am just trying to build mcabber, which also complains about missing UTF-8 support in ncurses. What's worse this time is that mcabber then uses VT100 line drawing characters (via ncurses) to draw its TUI and this doesn't work with a UTF-8 CSWxterm (and i suppose neither with any other UTF-8 terminal emulator). The vertical lines are shifted, sometimes they don't display at all and words are not correctly wrapped on the right hand side of the terminal.

I can work around this by either setting NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS=1 when calling mcabber or using xterm in non UTF-8 mode, but IMHO it could be more straight-forward when we would have UTF-8 support in ncurses.

I had a look at the ncurses README again: --enable-widec produces a separate set of libs with a "w" suffix. Those are _not_ compatible with the regular ncurses libs, but because of the "w" suffix they don't clash, so i think it should be safe to build an additional wide ncurses version without breaking existing stuff. Debian does it this way, they have libncurses5 and libncursesw5.
(0005806)
dam   
2009-03-31 23:35   
Fixed in 5.7,REV=2009.03.31