Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:15330 comp.unix.wizards:13972
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: curses (was: printf, data presentation)
Message-ID: <9318@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 9 Jan 89 04:10:06 GMT
References: <19@xenlink.UUCP> <7328@chinet.chi.il.us> <144@bms-at.UUCP> <11064@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <6896@june.cs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 17

In article <6896@june.cs.washington.edu> ka@june.cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist) writes:
>Well, my memory is pretty fuzzy here, but I was under the impression that
>AT&T had nothing to do with the original development of the terminfo version
>of curses, although Mark Horton did a lot of work on it after AT&T picked
>up the code.  I recall that the code was copyrighted by Pavel Curtis (or
>some such person), and if it had been developed by AT&T then AT&T or Bell
>Labs would be the owner of the copyright.  Anyone know for sure?

Yes, I was peripherally involved with this.  The original termcap-based
curses was developed at Berkeley, and when Mark Horton took a job with
Bell Labs, he developed terminfo as an improved version of termcap, and
adapted curses to work with terminfo.  The current UNIX System V curses
evolved from that, and has been substantially reworked by several people.

Pavel Curtis, desiring to provide terminfo without AT&T licensing,
developed an independent implementation, working just from the specs.
Neither AT&T's nor Pavel's versions are based on the other's code.