Why does gettext require curses?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Sep 17, 2009, at 12:55, Michael_google gmail_Gersten wrote:

> Why does gettext -- a library dealing with looking up translation
> strings in a database -- need ncurses -- a library for displaying text
> on terminal screens?
>
> Can this dependency be removed? It seems very, very odd.

The ncurses dependency was added to gettext in r32719. The  
DEPENDENCIES file says:


* GNU ncurses (preferred)
   or libtermcap (discouraged) or a curses library (legacy).
   + Highly recommended.
     Needed for the --color option of the 'msgcat' program.
   + Homepage:
     http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/
   + Download:
     http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/
     ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/
   + If it is installed in a nonstandard directory, pass the option
     --with-ncurses-prefix=DIR or --with-libtermcap-prefix to  
'configure'.