This file lists major changes which accompany each new release.
Version 1.6.3:
This release corrects some problems in the build process,
including one that was preventing libtecla from being compiled
on Mac OS X.
Version 1.6.2:
This release updates the configuration script to ensure that the
enhance utility program is compiled correctly on systems that have
system V psuedo-terminal allocation but not system V streams.
There are no new features.
Version 1.6.1:
This is primarily a minor bug-fix release.
One added feature is the ability to call gl_normal_io() from
callbacks registered by gl_watch_fd() and
gl_inactivity_timeout(). This allows these callbacks to cleanly
suspend line editing before either reading from the terminal, or
writing to the terminal; and then subsequently causes the input line
to be automatically redisplayed, and line-editing to be resumed by
gl_get_line(), as soon as the callback returns.
Another minor change is that if the terminal type specified in the
TERM environment variable is set to "dumb", gl_get_line() now treats
the terminal as though it were a non-interactive stream, rather than
treating it as a VT100-compatible terminal. This means that it
doesn't either prompt for input, or perform any command-line
editing, even when it really is interacting with a terminal. This is
aimed at the rare situation where a third-pary program that connects
to libtecla through an embedded pseudo-terminal, needs to be forced
to behave as though it weren't talking to a terminal, in order that
it be useable in non-interactive scripts.
Note that in the previous release, the optional configuration
function, gl_tty_signals(), was incorrectly swapping the suspend and
terminal signal handlers before installing them.
A configuration problem that prevented select() from being used
under MacOS X, has been fixed.
Although not documented in the man page, it was meant to be possible
to take the input line that one call to gl_get_line() returned, and
ask the next call to gl_get_line() to present it back to the user
for re-editing, simply by passing the pointer returned by one call
to gl_get_line() as the start_line argument of the next call to
gl_get_line(). This feature unfortunately stopped working in 1.6.0,
so this release restores it, and officially documents it in the man
page documentation of gl_get_line().
In the previous version of the library, calling gl_terminal_size()
on a system without SIGWINCH support, would crash the
application. This has been fixed.
Libtecla now apparently compiles cleanly under IRIX.
Version 1.6.0:
This release is primarily a bug-fix release. However there are also
four new functions, so the minor version number has been
incremented to reflect this.
Two of the new functions are gl_automatic_history() and
gl_append_history(). The former of these functions allows the
application to tell gl_get_line() not to automatically archive
entered lines in the history list. The second of these functions
allows the application to explicitly append a line to the history
list. Thus together, these two functions allow the calling
application to take over control of what is placed in the history
list.
The third new function is gl_query_char(), which prompts the user
for a single character reply, which the user can then type without
having to hit return to enter it. Unless echoing is disabled, the
character that is entered is then displayed after the prompt,
and a newline is started.
Finally, the 4th new function is gl_read_char(), which also reads
a single character from the user, but doesn't prompt the user, write
anything to the terminal, or disturb any partially entered input
line. It is thus safe to call this function not only from between
calls to gl_get_line(), but also from application callback
functions, even if gl_normal_io() hasn't been called.
When using the history-search-backwards or history-search-forwards
actions, if the search prefix that the user typed, contains any of
the *,? or [ globbing characters, it is now treated as a glob
pattern to be matched against historical lines, instead of a simple
prefix.
I have added a --without-file-system option to the configure
script. This is intended for use in embedded systems that either
don't have filesystems, or where the file-system code in libtecla is
seen as unwanted bloat. See the INSTALL document for details.
Similarly, I also added a --without-file-actions option to the
configure script. This allows the application author/installer to
prevent users of gl_get_line() from accessing the filesystem with
the builtin actions of gl_get_line(). It does this by removing a
number of action functions, such as expand-filename, and list-glob,
and by changing the default behavior of other actions, such as
complete-word and list-or-eof, to show no completions.
Now to the bugs that have been fixed. Version 1.5.0 had a lot of big
internal changes, so there are a number of bugs that needed to be
fixed. There was a bug which caused a crash if gl_load_history()
was called multiple times. There was another bug which caused a
prompt not to be displayed on the next line after switching from
reading input from a file to reading from the terminal. Also, in
tecla configuration files, backslash escaped characters within
key-binding key-sequences weren't being escaped. Thus ^\\ got
interpretted as a control-\ followed by a \ character instead of as
a control-\. There was a bug in the history recall mechanism which
caused the search prefix to be forgotten in certain complicated
usage scenarios. There was a minor memory leak in the
gl_configure_getline() function. Finally, if gl_get_line() was
aborted by a signal, or any other abnormal event, the value of errno
which originally indicated what had happened, got zeroed by the
code that restored the terminal to a usable state. Thus the
application couldn't figure out what had caused the error, apart
from by looking at gl_return_status(). All of these bugs have been
fixed.
In the Makefile, there were a number of places where install-sh was
invoked without a path prefix. This has now been remedied.
A fully functional workaround for a bug in Solaris' terminal I/O
code has also been implemented. This bug, which only manifested
itself in libtecla's uncommonly used non-blocking server I/O mode,
caused characters entered while in normal I/O mode, between calls to
gl_get_line() to be invisible to the next call to gl_get_line(),
until the user typed at least one more key after raw terminal mode
was restored.
The Gnu autoconf config.guess and config.sub scripts have been
updated to their latest versions. Apparently the old versions that I
was previously using were too old to know about certain BSD ports.
Version 1.5.0:
This release includes several major new features for those using
gl_get_line(), shared library support in Darwin, better cross
compilation support, and various minor bug fixes.
The biggest new feature is the option of a non-blocking I/O mode, in
which gl_get_line() can safely be called from an application's
external event-loop to incrementally read input lines from the user.
This feature is documented in the gl_io_mode(3) man page.
In addition, there is now support for the definition of additional
word-completion action functions, which can then be bound to
different keys. See the documentation of the gl_completion_action()
function in the gl_get_line(3) man page.
Externally defined action functions can also be defined, although
presently they don't have write access to the input line, so they
are restricted to operations that display information text to the
terminal, or modify the environment of the calling application in
some way. See the documentation of the gl_register_action() function
in the gl_get_line(3) man page.
Some of the non-blocking I/O support functions can also be used for
improved signal handling in the normal blocking mode. In particular,
the gl_list_signals() and gl_catch_blocked() functions make it
easier to write reliable signal handling around gl_get_line(). The
new "RELIABLE SIGNAL HANDLING" section of the gl_get_line(3) man
page is intended as an introduction to this subject.
Programs can now clear the terminal between calls to gl_get_line(),
by calling the new gl_erase_terminal() function.
The gl_display_text() function, now used in the demos to display
introductory banners, is provided for formatting text according to
the width of the terminal.
It is now possible to install inactivity timeout callbacks in
gl_get_line(), using the new gl_inactivity_timeout() function.
The new gl_set_term_size() function allows the application to
explicitly set the terminal size, for cases, such as when one is
using a terminal at the end of a serial lineq, where the terminal
driver doesn't send the process a SIGWINCH when the terminal size
changes.
The new gl_bind_keyseq() function provides a convenient
alternative to gl_configure_getline(), for binding or unbinding
one key-sequence at a time.
gl_get_line()s signal handling, file-descriptor event-handling,
inactivity-timeout handling and server-mode non-blocking I/O
features now not only work when input is coming from a terminal, but
now also work when input is coming from non-interactive streams,
such as files and pipes.
The history implementation has been re-written to make it more
efficient and easier to modify. The biggest user-level change is
that when recalling history lines using a search prefix, the same
line is no longer returned more than once in a row. Previously this
duplicate elimination only worked when one was recalling a line
without specifying a search prefix, and this was naively performed
by preventing neighboring duplicates from existing in the history
list, rather than by skipping duplicates at search time.
In previous versions of the library, when gl_get_line() and its
associated public functions detected invalid arguments, or couldn't
allocate memory, etc, error messages were written to stderr. This
isn't appropriate for library functions, so instead of writing such
messages to stderr, these messages are now recorded in buffers
within the affected GetLine object. The latest error message can
then subsequently be queried by calling gl_error_message(). The use
of errno has also been expanded, and a new function called
gl_return_status() has been provided to expand on the cause of the
last return from gl_get_line().
User level usage and configuration information has now been split
out of the gl_get_line(3) man page into a separate tecla(7) man
page. The enhance(3) man page has also been renamed to enhance(1).
When expanding "~/", gl_get_line() now checks for, and returns the
value of the HOME environment variable, if it exists, in preference
to looking up the directory of the current user in the password
file.
When the terminal was resized to a narrower width, previous versions
of gl_get_line() would redraw the line higher up the terminal. This
bug has been fixed. A bug in history recall has also been fixed, in
which an error message was being generated if one attempted to
recall a line while the cursor was at the end of the longest
possible input line. A more serious bug, in which callbacks
registered by gl_watch_fd() weren't being called for write-events,
has also been fixed. Finally, a few minor fixes have been made to
improve support under QNX and Mac OS X.
Beware that in this release, much of the underlying code has
undergone some radical re-work, so although backwards compatibility
of all documented features has been preserved, there may be some
lingering bugs that could break existing programs. So, if you plan
to use this version in production code, please test it as far as
possible within your application before releasing it to your
clients, and as always, please report any unexpected behavior.
Version 1.4.1:
This is a maintenance release. It includes minor changes to support
Mac OS X (Darwin), the QNX real-time operating system, and Cygwin
under Windows. It also fixes an oversight that was preventing the
tab key from inserting tab characters when users unbound the
complete-word action from it.
Version 1.4.0:
The contents of the history list can now be saved and restored with
the new gl_save_history() and gl_load_history() functions.
Event handlers can now be registered to watch for and respond to I/O
on arbitrary file descriptors while gl_get_line() is waiting for
terminal input from the user. See the gl_get_line(3) man page
for details on gl_watch_fd().
As an optional alternative to getting configuration information only
from ~/.teclarc, the new gl_configure_getline() function allows
configuration commands to be taken from any of, a string, a
specified application-specific file, and/or a specified
user-specific file. See the gl_get_line(3) man page for details.
The version number of the library can now be queried using the
libtecla_version() function. See the libtecla(3) man page.
The new gl_group_history() function allows applications to group
different types of input line in the history buffer, and arrange for
only members of the appropriate group to be recalled on a given call
to gl_get_line(). See the gl_get_line(3) man page.
The new gl_show_history() function displays the current history list
to a given stdio output stream. See the gl_get_line(3) man page.
new_GetLine() now allows you to specify a history buffer size of
zero, thus requesting that no history buffer be allocated. You can
subsequently resize or delete the history buffer at any time, by
calling gl_resize_history(), limit the number of lines that are
allowed in the buffer by calling gl_limit_history(), clear either
all history lines from the history list, or just the history lines
that are associated with the current history group, by calling
gl_clear_history, and toggle the history mechanism on and off by
calling gl_toggle_history().
The new gl_terminal_size() function can be used to query the
current terminal size. It can also be used to supply a default
terminal size on systems where no mechanism is available for
looking up the size.
The contents and configuration of the history list can now be
obtained by the calling application, by calling the new
gl_lookup_history(), gl_state_of_history(), gl_range_of_history()
and gl_size_of_history() functions. See the gl_get_line(3) man page.
Echoing of the input line as it is typed, can now be turned on and
off via the new gl_echo_mode() function. While echoing is disabled,
newly entered input lines are omitted from the history list. See
the gl_get_line(3) man page.
While the default remains to display the prompt string literally,
the new gl_prompt_style() function can be used to enable text
attribute formatting directives in prompt strings, such as
underlining, bold font, and highlighting directives.
Signal handling in gl_get_line() is now customizable. The default
signal handling behavior remains essentially the same, except that
the SIGTSTP, SIGTTIN and SIGTTOU are now forwarded to the
corresponding signal handler of the calling program, instead of
causing a SIGSTOP to be sent to the application. It is now possible
to remove signals from the list that are trapped by gl_get_line(),
as well as add new signals to this list. The signal and terminal
environments in which the signal handler of the calling program is
invoked, and what gl_get_line() does after the signal handler
returns, is now customizable on a per signal basis. You can now also
query the last signal that was caught by gl_get_line(). This is
useful when gl_get_line() aborts with errno=EINTR, and you need to
know which signal caused it to abort.
Key-sequences bound to action functions can now start with printable
characters. Previously only keysequences starting with control or
meta characters were permitted.
gl_get_line() is now 8-bit clean. If the calling program has
correctly called setlocale(LC_CTYPE,""), then the user can select an
alternate locale by setting the standard LC_CTYPE, LC_ALL, or LANG
environment variables, and international characters can then be
entered directly, either by using a non-US keyboard, or by using a
compose key on a standard US keyboard. Note that in locales in which
meta characters become printable, meta characters no longer match
M-c bindings, which then have to be entered using their escape-c
equivalents. Fortunately most modern terminal emulators either
output the escape-c version by default when the meta key is used, or
can be configured to do so (see the gl_get_line(3) man page), so in
most cases you can continue to use the meta key.
Completion callback functions can now tell gl_get_line() to return
the input line immediately after a successful tab completion, simply
by setting the last character of the optional continuation suffix to
a newline character (ie. in the call to cpl_add_completion()).
It is now safe to create and use multiple GetLine objects, albeit
still only from a single thread. In conjunction with the new
gl_configure_getline() function, this optionally allows multiple
GetLine objects with different bindings to be used to implement
different input modes.
The edit-mode configuration command now accepts the argument,
none. This tells gl_get_line() to revert to using just the native
line editing facilities provided by the terminal driver. This could
be used if the termcap or terminfo entry of the host terminal were
badly corrupted.
Application callback functions invoked by gl_get_line() can now
change the displayed prompt using the gl_replace_prompt() function.
Their is now an optional program distributed with the library. This
is a beta release of a program which adds tecla command-line editing
to virtually any third party application without the application
needing to be linked to the library. See the enhance(3) man page for
further details. Although built and installed by default, the
INSTALL document explains how to prevent this.
The INSTALL document now explains how you can stop the demo programs
from being built and installed.
NetBSD/termcap fixes. Mike MacFaden reported two problems that he
saw when compiling libtecla under NetBSD. Both cases were related to
the use of termcap. Most systems use terminfo, so this problem has
gone unnoticed until now, and won't have affected the grand majority
of users. The configure script had a bug which prevented the check
for CPP working properly, and getline.c wouldn't compile due to an
undeclared variable when USE_TERMCAP was defined. Both problems have
now been fixed. Note that if you successfully compiled version
1.3.3, this problem didn't affect you.
An unfortunate and undocumented binding of the key-sequence M-O was
shadowing the arrow-key bindings on systems that use ^[OA etc. I
have removed this binding (the documented lower case M-o binding
remains bound). Under the KDE konsole terminal this was causing the
arrow keys to do something other than expected.
There was a bug in the history list code which could result in
strange entries appearing at the start of the history list once
enough history lines had been added to the list to cause the
circular history buffer to wrap. This is now fixed.
Version 1.3.3:
Signal handling has been re-written, and documentation of its
behaviour has been added to the gl_get_line(3) man page. In addition
to eliminating race conditions, and appropriately setting errno for
those signals that abort gl_get_line(), many more signals are now
intercepted, making it less likely that the terminal will be left in
raw mode by a signal that isn't trapped by gl_get_line().
A bug was also fixed that was leaving the terminal in raw mode if
the editing mode was changed interactively between vi and emacs.
This was only noticeable when running programs from old shells that
don't reset terminal modes.
Version 1.3.2:
Tim Eliseo contributed a number of improvements to vi mode,
including a fuller set of vi key-bindings, implementation of the vi
constraint that the cursor can't backup past the point at which
input mode was entered, and restoration of overwritten characters
when backspacing in overwrite mode. There are also now new bindings
to allow users to toggle between vi and emacs modes interactively.
The terminal bell is now used in some circumstances, such as when an
unrecognized key sequence is entered. This can be turned off by the
new nobeep option in the tecla configuration file.
Unrelated to the above, a problem under Linux which prevented ^Q
from being used to resume terminal output after the user had pressed
^S, has been fixed.
Version 1.3.1:
In vi mode a bug was preventing the history-search-backward and
history-search-forward actions from doing anything when invoked on
empty lines. On empty lines they now act like up-history and
down-history respectively, as in emacs mode.
When creating shared libraries under Linux, the -soname directive
was being used incorrectly. The result is that Linux binaries linked
with the 1.2.3, 1.2.4 and 1.3.0 versions of the tecla shared
libraries, will refuse to see other versions of the shared library
until relinked with version 1.3.1 or higher.
The configure script can now handle the fact that under Solaris-2.6
and earlier, the only curses library is a static one that hides in
/usr/ccs/lib. Under Linux it now also caters for old versions of GNU
ld which don't accept version scripts.
The demos are now linked against the shared version of the library
if possible. Previously they were always linked with the static
version.
Version 1.3.0:
The major change in this release is the addition of an optional vi
command-line editing mode in gl_get_line(), along with lots of new
action functions to support its bindings. To enable this, first
create a ~/.teclarc file if you don't already have one, then add the
following line to it.
edit-mode vi
The default vi bindings, which are designed to mimic those of the vi
editor as closely as possible, are described in the gl_get_line(3)
man page.
A new convenience function called ef_list_expansions() has been
added for listing filename expansions. See the ef_list_expansions(3)
man page for details. This is used in a new list-glob binding, bound
to ^Xg in emacs mode, and ^G in vi input mode.
A bug has been fixed in the key-binding table expansion code. This
bug would have caused problems to anybody who defined more than
about 18 personalized key-bindings in their ~/.teclarc file.
Version 1.2.4:
Buffered I/O is now used for writing to terminals, and where
supported, cursor motion is done with move-n-positions terminfo
capabilities instead of doing lots of move-1-position requests. This
greatly improves how the library feels over slow links.
You can now optionally compile different architectures in different
directories, without having to make multiple copies of the
distribution. This is documented in the INSTALL file.
The ksh ~+ directive is now supported.
Thanks to Markus Gyger for the above improvements.
Documentation has been added to the INSTALL file describing features
designed to facilitate configuration and installation of the library
as part of larger packages. These features are intended to remove
the need to modify the tecla distribution's configuration and build
procedures when embedding the libtecla distribution in other package
distributions.
A previous fix to stop the cursor from warping when the last
character of the input line was in the last column of the terminal,
was only being used for the first terminal line of the input line.
It is now used for all subsequent lines as well, as originally
intended.
Version 1.2.3:
The installation procedure has been better automated with the
addition of an autoconf configure script. This means that installers
can now compile and install the library by typing:
./configure
make
make install
On all systems this makes at least the normal static version of the
tecla library. It also makes the reentrant version if reentrant
POSIX functions are detected. Under Solaris, Linux and HP-UX the
configuration script arranges for shared libraries to be compiled in
addition to the static libraries. It is hoped that installers will
return information about how to compile shared libraries on other
systems, for inclusion in future releases, and to this end, a new
PORTING guide has been provided.
The versioning number scheme has been changed. This release would
have been 1.2c, but instead will be refered to as 1.2.3. The
versioning scheme, based on conventions used by Sun Microsystems, is
described in configure.in.
The library was also tested under HP-UX, and this revealed two
serious bugs, both of which have now been fixed.
The first bug prevented the library from writing control codes to
terminals on big-endian machines, with the exception of those
running under Solaris. This was due to an int variable being used
where a char was needed.
The second bug had the symptom that on systems that don't use the
newline character as the control code for moving the cursor down a
line, a newline wasn't started when the user hit enter.
Version 1.2b:
Two more minor bug fixes:
Many terminals don't wrap the cursor to the next line when a
character is written to the rightmost terminal column. Instead, they
delay starting a new line until one more character is written, at
which point they move the cursor two positions. gl_get_line()
wasn't aware of this, so cursor repositionings just after writing
the last character of a column, caused it to erroneously go up a
line. This has now been remedied, using a method that should work
regardless of whether a terminal exhibits this behavior or not.
Some systems dynamically record the current terminal dimensions in
environment variables called LINES and COLUMNS. On such systems,
during the initial terminal setup, these values should override the
static values read from the terminal information databases, and now
do. Previously they were only used if the dimensions returned by
terminfo/termcap looked bogus.
Version 1.2a:
This minor release fixes the following two bugs:
The initial terminal size and subsequent changes thereto, weren't
being noticed by gl_get_line(). This was because the test for the
existence of TIOCWINSZ was erroneously placed before the inclusion
of termios.h. One of the results was that on input lines that
spanned more than one terminal line, the cursor occasionally jumped
unexpectedly to the previous terminal line.
On entering a line that wrapped over multiple terminal lines,
gl_get_line() simply output a carriage-return line-feed at the point
at which the user pressed return. Thus if one typed in such a line,
then moved back onto one of the earlier terminal lines before
hitting return, the cursor was left on a line containing part of the
line that had just been entered. This didn't do any harm, but it
looked a mess.
Version 1.2:
A new facility for looking up and completing filenames in UNIX-style
paths has now been added (eg. you can search for, or complete
commands using the UNIX PATH environment variable). See the
pca_lookup_file(3) man page.
The already existing filename completion callback can now be made
selective in what types of files it lists. See the
cpl_complete_word(3) man page.
Due to its potential to break applications when changed, the use of
the publically defined CplFileArgs structure to configure the
cpl_file_completions() callback is now deprecated. The definition
of this structure has been frozen, and its documentation has been
removed from the man pages. It will remain supported, but if you
have used it, you are recommended to switch to the new method, which
involves a new opaque configuration object, allocated via a provided
constructor function, configured via accessor functions, and
eventually deleted with a provided destructor function. The
cpl_file_completions() callback distinguishes which structure type
it has been sent by virtue of a code placed at the start of the new
structure by the constructor. It is assumed that no existing
applications set the boolean 'escaped' member of the CplFileArgs
structure to 4568. The new method is documented in the
cpl_complete_word(3) man page.
Version 1.1j
This was the initial public release on freshmeat.org.