These calls were designed for ncurses(3X), and are not found in
SVr4 curses, 4.4BSD curses, or any other previous version of
curses.
SVr4 curses had support for the mouse in a variant of xterm. It
is mentioned in a few places, but with no supporting
documentation:
• the 'libcurses' manual page lists functions for this feature
which are prototyped in curses.h:
extern int mouse_set(long int);
extern int mouse_on(long int);
extern int mouse_off(long int);
extern int request_mouse_pos(void);
extern int map_button(unsigned long);
extern void wmouse_position(WINDOW *, int *, int *);
extern unsigned long getmouse(void), getbmap(void);
• the 'terminfo' manual page lists capabilities for the feature
buttons btns BT Number of buttons on the mouse
get_mouse getm Gm Curses should get button events
key_mouse kmous Km 0631, Mouse event has occurred
mouse_info minfo Mi Mouse status information
req_mouse_pos reqmp RQ Request mouse position report
• the interface made assumptions (as does ncurses) about the
escape sequences sent to and received from the terminal.
For instance the SVr4 curses library used the get_mouse
capability to tell the terminal which mouse button events it
should send, passing the mouse-button bit-mask to the
terminal. Also, it could ask the terminal where the mouse
was using the req_mouse_pos capability.
Those features required a terminal which had been modified to
work with curses. They were not part of the X Consortium's
xterm.
When developing the xterm mouse support for ncurses in September
1995, Eric Raymond was uninterested in using the same interface
due to its lack of documentation. Later, in 1998, Mark Hesseling
provided support in PDCurses 2.3 using the SVr4 interface.
PDCurses, however, does not use video terminals, making it
unnecessary to be concerned about compatibility with the escape
sequences.
The feature macro NCURSES_MOUSE_VERSION is provided so the
preprocessor can be used to test whether these features are
present. If the interface is changed, the value of
NCURSES_MOUSE_VERSION will be incremented. These values for
NCURSES_MOUSE_VERSION may be specified when configuring ncurses:
1 has definitions for reserved events. The mask uses 28
bits.
2 adds definitions for button 5, removes the definitions for
reserved events. The mask uses 29 bits.
The order of the MEVENT structure members is not guaranteed.
Additional fields may be added to the structure in the future.
Under ncurses(3X), these calls are implemented using either
xterm's built-in mouse-tracking API or platform-specific drivers
including
• Alessandro Rubini's gpm server
• FreeBSD sysmouse
• OS/2 EMX
If you are using an unsupported configuration, mouse events will
not be visible to ncurses(3X) (and the mousemask function will
always return 0).
If the terminfo entry contains a XM string, this is used in the
xterm mouse driver to control the way the terminal is initialized
for mouse operation. The default, if XM is not found,
corresponds to private mode 1000 of xterm:
\E[?1000%?%p1%{1}%=%th%el%;
The mouse driver also recognizes a newer xterm private mode 1006,
e.g.,
\E[?1006;1000%?%p1%{1}%=%th%el%;
The z member in the event structure is not presently used. It is
intended for use with touch screens (which may be pressure-
sensitive) or with 3D-mice/trackballs/power gloves.
The ALL_MOUSE_EVENTS class does not include
REPORT_MOUSE_POSITION. They are distinct. For example, in
xterm, wheel/scrolling mice send position reports as a sequence
of presses of buttons 4 or 5 without matching button-releases.
