Talk:ncurses

Computing: Software / Free and open-source software Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Software (assessed as Low-importance).
	This article is supported by Free and open-source software (assessed as Low-importance).

Linux Low‑importance

	Linux portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Linux, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Linux on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinuxWikipedia:WikiProject LinuxTemplate:WikiProject LinuxLinux
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

The following Wikipedia contributor may be personally or professionally connected to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view.

TEDickey (talk · contribs)

Useless cross-reference

"See also: Ubuntu". Eh? ncurses has nothing to do with Ubuntu beyond being one of its components, in the same way as it's a component of hundreds of other GNU/Linux distributions. (I'm an Ubuntu developer.) I'll revert this if it isn't explained. --Colin Watson 23:58, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Reverted, let me know if I'm insane. :-) --Colin Watson 11:22, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not a qualified mental health practitioner, so of course I can't answer that question, but you're quite correct on this point ;-) --David Gerard 08:58, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Capitalization?

Does anyone know what the proper capitalization is for ncurses/Ncurses? When I first saw this page, the all lower-case seemed more probable and UNIX-ish, but the official page isn't consistent. Really a trivial issue, was just curious. --A brisson 18:44, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is pretty much agreed in most areas that ncurses is the correct capitalization. I think I saw nCurses once, but that was only once. ^^;;

--Emry 14:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why a permissive licence?

Does have a link which explains why ncurses was released under a permissive licence insead of the GPL or LGPL? I can take a good guess, but getting it from Stallman would be better. Anyone? Gronky 07:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right here, from its project manager: [1] [2]. - PGSONIC 00:14, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

system bias

wasn't the first paragraph supposed to give a general iudea of the subject for users not familiar with the subject. cause I don't get a single word 354d 23:41, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Windows

Is there any program to install Ncurses in Windows ?. --Mac (talk) 14:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC) Found: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/ncurses.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mac (talk • contribs) 14:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

date

There was a short part in curses that I moved here about the date of the start of the project. May be cruft. -- Aronzak (talk) 08:06, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I had it in curses (programming library) since pcurses is the basis for more than one implementation (including the "original" SunOS curses library - you can see some of the comments in the code on OpenSolaris.org). Either way, it's relevant... Tedickey (talk) 11:02, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

use of inaccurate sources

Recent edit added an external link to a low-value article. There are three parts:

the factual information is already in Wikipedia, using better sources,
it has more than one inaccuracy, and
it has some screenshots.

The editor who added the link appears only interested in the last part (though comparable screenshots are available from other sources, including Wikipedia). Some of the inaccuracies:

screen uses termcap, not terminfo and in particular does not use any ncurses-specific feature
Midnight Commander is more often associated with s-lang than ncurses (in contrast to mutt)
w3m is another termcap application, though its bizarre use of the GPM interface actually makes it anti-ncurses
the article's comments about menuconfig are second-hand (the author's range of experience doesn't go back that far in time).
the comment about yast also is second-hand (it's not a mode, but a separate executable)

Tedickey (talk) 00:50, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ed Carp

Anon-IP is promoting Ed Carp. I found no WP:RS to support the statements given ("full color support" by the way is advertising unless supported by multiple independent reliable sources). Googling finds that Ed Carp expressed an intention to produce a curses library, but finds nothing to indicate that the intention was carried out, nor did anyone notice. He was mentioned (along with about 20 other people) in a "thanks" section in an early version of ncurses, but even that was trimmed to eliminate non-substantial contributions in the mid-1990s. He is not mentioned in ncurses past that point; there is no apparent reason to promote Ed Carp when there are more than two hundred substantial contributors (see [NEWS]) to consider. TEDickey (talk) 10:10, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It was widely known in the user community at the time of the curses work done by me, and lack of attribution is in no way "vandalism" or any less valid. There are many assertions in the curses and ncurses wiki pages that are not attributed, but are allowed to exist.

12.176.206.100 (talk) 16:12, 27 October 2012 (UTC) Ed Carp (erc@pobox.com)[reply]

As I already noted, there are no reliable sources, or you would have provided one or more. TEDickey (talk) 16:44, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"M1995"

Editor did not clarify this "M1995" (a plain year was accurate enough, the use of "M" is obscure. By the way, the overall effect of this edit is to move away from the given sources, into editor's interpretation. TEDickey (talk) 17:49, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Ncurses. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Y An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 23:26, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rogue

Rogue is not a "text-based adventure game." Rogue is the text-base RPG that started the trend of "Rogue-like" games. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.241.227.108 (talk) 18:35, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Usenix source

That source is unverifiable, long out of print, and by the way the statement it supported is likely not found in that source anyway. TEDickey (talk) 21:04, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There were over 23 contributors...

The given source doesn't provide that information (doesn't cover the dates from 2000-2011). By reading the source code and website, (a) there are more contributors than mentioned, (b) but only a few accounted for more than 0.5% of the changes since 1996. TEDickey (talk) 21:05, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Look for the words «These individuals were...» in the first link. Contributors are listed there. I don't see any problems on the rest. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 18:37, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As written, your statement cites a date range not supported by that source, lists contributors not mentioned in that source, and if you had read the FAQ, you might have realized that the "23" referred to minor contributors (not listed). So it fails verification. If you need clarification of the source, the bug-ncurses mailing list is a suitable place for that, with the usual caveats TEDickey (talk) 21:39, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's obvious that in the period of 1997-2001 there were many contributors. The source[3] clearly stated that at the time (1997) there were «… more than 20 contributors …» and listed 23 of them. It seems like that you just failed to read it. What are you disputing here? AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 10:17, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Read my comment: your statement uses information not in the cited source, and places undue emphasis on data from 1998. By the way, your removal of maintenance templates without addressing the issues is against the guidelines. TEDickey (talk) 20:36, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Response to third opinion request:

I am Springnuts, a formerly uninvolved editor. I have not, AFAIK, previously interacted with any other editor involved.

User:Alexander Davronov has requested [[4]] a 3O about whether or not the summary box which lists seven people as the developers of ncurses should have a footnote stating that

These are principal developers. There were over 23 contributors inbetween 1999 and 2011 who made significant contributions to the project

The footnote has been tagged with a ‘dubious’ tag by User:Tedickey

I note that User:Alexander Davronov, who replaced a single developer name with a list of seven (presumably principal) developers, and added the footnote, is currently pursuing a complaint against user User:Tedickey at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents over a separate editing dispute, the merits of which they (User:Alexander Davronov) are also pursuing at WP:3O.

I restrict my comments to the dispute over this article.

From the source the 23 contributors referenced in the footnote are referred to as minor contributors with as few as 15 lines of code. There were also an unspecified number of others who made up to 19 lines of code who are not included in the 23 people referred to in the source.

In my opinion the footnote serves no encyclopaedic purpose. Readers will be aware the software development is a collaborative effort. The number given in the source is inevitably a little arbitrary. The footnote should be deleted, along with (for slightly different reasons; see below) the ‘dubious’ tag.

I have no opinion (and the 3O request does not ask about this) as to the accuracy of the current list of seven principal developers.

I wish to draw User:Tedickey’s attention to the policy on Conflict of interest. COI editing is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia. I invite User:Tedickey to consider whether COI policy indicates they should not make further edits to this article, and that if edits already made – such as the ‘dubious’ tag - are reverted - they should not re-revert.

Disclaimer: This is only my opinion, and editors are entirely free to ignore it :) Springnuts (talk) 22:18, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sure - I keep COI in mind for all of my edits (which is why I emphasize use of reliable sources rather than arguing on talk pages. You might notice earlier that I suggested to this editor where to get clarification (again, referring to a reliable source), but without result. A Wikipedia topic which makes statements that can't be sourced, is dubious, no matter what dictionary you happen to use. COI is irrelevant for that. TEDickey (talk) 23:33, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Springnuts: I think Ted won't breach WP:COI if he makes slight tagging given his profound knowledge of the matter. I've closed my WP:ANI request so we don't waste time elsewhere.
@Tedickey: You should have told me in first place that you are a maintainer. I thought that the profile name is coincidental. I'm inclining to remove the footnote but leave the following two sources for the given 7 developers. Are we okay with that?:

"NCURSES - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): Who wrote NCURSES?".

"NCURSES — Licensing". Retrieved July 9, 2013.

AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 08:44, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The FAQ section links to the list of authors (which as noted, goes down to 0.5%). Given that threshold, you may realize that the numbers drop off rapidly (most contributors make only one change). The NEWS file in the sources lists all of the feature changes. A following link (for "summary") gives better insight on the numbers involved. Feature changes aren't the same as commits.

Given the complexity of the FAQ (with multiple links, including the License page), I'd summarize the number as "many". The summary page is several years old, and shown only as an example (all of the numbers grow over time). TEDickey (talk) 10:06, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As for pointing out that I'm the author of the FAQ, that's problematic: I frequently read talk-page comments by individuals who claim without any proof to be expert or deeply involved, etc. So I focus on the sources involved. TEDickey (talk) 10:10, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Tedickey: I'm going to remove the numbers footnote and only leave 7 major contributors. Are we ok with that? AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 10:23, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

that sounds okay TEDickey (talk) 21:11, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]