HISTORY.md

History

• 2021-02-08: Notcurses 2.2.0 "no one man should have all that power".
• 2021-02-06: Lightning talk at FOSDEM 2021.
• 2021-01-28: Notcurses 2.1.7 introduces the extracted notcurses-core library, to allow packaging/linking without multimedia dependencies.
• 2021-01-11: Notcurses is accepted into DragonFly BSD.
• 2020-12-13: Notcurses 2.1.0 "rubberband man".
• 2020-11-23: Invited presentation at DebMiniConf #2.
• 2020-10-12: Notcurses 2.0.0 "stankonia".
  • A stable API! This API will be supported going forward. Hype video!
• 2020-08-30: Notcurses 1.7.0 "don't pull the bang out".
• 2020-07-04: Notcurses 1.6.0 "aquemini".
• 2020-07-03: Notcurses is accepted into Alpine Edge.
• 2020-06-08: Notcurses 1.5.0 "ghetto bird".
• 2020-05-13: Notcurses is accepted into Fedora Core.
• 2020-05-10: Notcurses 1.4.0 "the saga continues".
• 2020-05-09: Notcurses is accepted into FreeBSD.
• 2020-04-19: Notcurses is accepted into Debian.
• 2020-04-12: Notcurses 1.3.0 "hypnotize".
• 2020-04-08: The Notcurses book is published.
• 2020-03-23: Notcurses is featured on Linux World News.
• 2020-02-17: Notcurses 1.2.0 "check the résumé, my record's impeccable".
• 2019-01-19: Notcurses 1.1.0 "all the hustlas they love it just to see one of us make it". Much better video support, pulsing planes, palette256.
  • The new hype video gets a lot of attention.
• 2019-01-04: Notcurses 1.0.0 "track team, crack fiend, dying to geek" is released, six days ahead of schedule. 147 issues closed. 702 commits.
• 2019-12-18: Notcurses 0.9.0 "You dig in! You dig out! You get out!", and also the first contributor besides myself (@grendello). Last major pre-GA release.
• 2019-12-05: Notcurses 0.4.0 "TRAP MUSIC ALL NIGHT LONG", the first generally usable Notcurses.
  • I prepare a demo, and release it on YouTube.
• November 2019: I begin work on Outcurses. Outcurses is a collection of routines atop NCURSES, including ncreels. I study the history of NCURSES, primarily using Thomas E. Dickey's FAQ and the mailing list archives.
  • 2019-11-14: I file Outcurses issue #56 regarding use of TrueColor in outcurses. This is partially inspired by Lexi Summer Hale's essay everything you ever wanted to know about terminals. I get into contact with Thomas E. Dickey and confirm that what I'm hoping to do doesn't really fit in with the codified Curses API.
  • 2019-11-16: I make the first commit to Notcurses.
• September 2019: I extracted fade routines from Growlight and Omphalos, and offered them to NCURSES as extensions. They are not accepted, which is understandable. I mention that I intend to extract ncreels, and offer to include them in the CDK (Curses Development Kit). Growlight issue #43 is created regarding this extraction. A few minor patches go into NCURSES.
• 2011, 2013: I develop Growlight and Omphalos, complicated TUIs making extensive use of NCURSES.

Thanks

• Notcurses could never be what it is without decades of tireless, likely thankless work by Thomas E. Dickey on NCURSES. His FAQ is a model of engineering history. He exemplifies documentation excellence and conservative, thoughtful stewardship. The free software community owes Mr. Dickey a great debt.
• Robert Edmonds provided tremendous assistance Debianizing the package, and David Cantrell did likewise for Fedora. Both are hella engineers.
• Justine Tunney, one of my first friends at Google NYC, was always present with support, and pointed out the useful memstream functionality of POSIX, eliminating the need for me to cons up something similar.
• I one night read the entirety of Lexi Summer Hale's essays, and began implementing her vision the next morning.
• NES art was lifted from The Spriters Resource and NES Sprite, the kind of sites that make the Internet great. It probably violates any number of copyrights. C'est la vie.
• Mark Ferrari, master of the pixel, for no good reason allowed me to reproduce his incredible and groundbreaking color-cycling artwork. Thanks Mark!
• The world map image was made by Vecteezy, and is used according to the terms of their License.
• Finally, the demoscene and general l33t scene of the 90s and early twenty-first century endlessly inspired a young hax0r. There is great joy in computing; no one will drive us from this paradise Turing has created!