How do you draw to the bottom-right corner of the screen?

[Tim Allen]

According to the ncurses announcement page, "Unlike SVr3 curses,  
ncurses can write to the rightmost-bottommost corner of the screen if  
your terminal has an insert-character capability." However, if you  
actually try this, mvaddch() returns ERR. Is there some special  
function call you have to make in order to get ncurses to accept  
bottom-right screen writes? The mvaddch manpage and numerous Google  
searches don't seem to mention such a thing.

Here is the code I used to test:

----------------------------------------------------
#include <curses.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    int c, ret;

    /* Curses init */
    initscr();
    cbreak();
    noecho();

    ret = mvaddch(LINES-1,COLS-1, ACS_CKBOARD);

    if (ret == ERR) {
        mvaddstr(0,0, "mvaddch had an error!");
    }

    /* refresh, accept single keystroke of input */
    c = getch();

    endwin();

    return 0;
}
----------------------------------------------------

...compiled with "gcc -lncurses curses-demo.c" on Mac OS X 10.4,  
which is ncurses 5.0 by default, but I also tried linking with a copy  
of 5.4 I found lying around, and version "5.6+20070812-1" on Debian  
Testing, all with the same behaviour.

What I expected:
 - chequerboard character appears at bottom-right corner of screen
 - everything else is blank

What I got:
 - chequerboard character appears at bottom-right corner of screen
 - error message at top-left corner of screen

It looks like the best way to draw on the bottom-right corner of the  
screen is to write my own wrapper function for mvaddch() that  
silently ignores errors if the coordinates are (LINES-1,COLS-1)...  
but I hate the thought of any solution involving the phrase "silently  
ignore errors". Is there a better way?