[Nano-devel] can't build without curses/ncurses and a string change suggestion

[Marco Colombo]

yo!!!
while preparing the italian translation, I tried to build 
nano-2.3.99pre3 from source. during configure I got the following messages:

[...]
checking for NCURSESW... no
checking ncurses.h usability... no
checking ncurses.h presence... no
checking for ncurses.h... no
checking for ncursesw5-config... ncursesw5-config
checking for get_wch in -lncursesw... no
checking for initscr in -lncurses... no
checking curses.h usability... no
checking curses.h presence... no
checking for curses.h... no
checking for get_wch in -lcurses... no
checking for initscr in -lcurses... no
configure: WARNING:
*** No curses lib available.  Consider getting the official ncurses
*** distribution from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses if you get
*** errors compiling nano.
checking for use_default_colors in -l... no
configure: WARNING:
*** Insufficient UTF-8 support was detected in your curses and/or C
*** libraries.  If you want UTF-8 support, please verify that your slang
*** was built with UTF-8 support or your curses was built with wide
*** character support, and that your C library was built with wide
*** character support.
[...]
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile
config.status: creating doc/Makefile
config.status: creating doc/nanorc.sample
config.status: creating doc/man/Makefile
config.status: creating doc/man/fr/Makefile
config.status: creating doc/syntax/Makefile
config.status: creating doc/texinfo/Makefile
config.status: creating m4/Makefile
config.status: creating po/Makefile.in
config.status: WARNING:  'po/Makefile.in.in' seems to ignore the 
--datarootdir setting
config.status: creating src/Makefile
config.status: creating nano.spec
config.status: creating config.h
config.status: config.h is unchanged
config.status: executing depfiles commands
config.status: executing default-1 commands
config.status: creating po/POTFILES
config.status: creating po/Makefile

so it seems that the lack of curses/ncurses shouldn't be a problem. 
however, make fails immediately:

gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I..  -DLOCALEDIR=\"/usr/local/share/locale\" 
-DSYSCONFDIR=\"/usr/local/etc\" -I/usr/include/ncursesw   -g -O2 -Wall 
-MT browser.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/browser.Tpo -c -o browser.o browser.c
In file included from proto.h:27:0,
                 from browser.c:24:
nano.h:93:20: fatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory
 #include <curses.h>
                    ^
compilation terminated.

so, either configure should stop with an error, or the compilation 
should be successful even without curses/ncurses. I don't mind which way 
you decide, but this the current status is not pleasant. :)
also, I think that the following string (I believe it's very recent) 
"the many translators and the TP" would be more intelligible if it read 
"the many translators and the Translation Project".
all the best!
ciao, marco

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