curses, terminfo, and termcap

[John B. Chambers]

From: John Chambers (guest moderator) <ut-sally!std-unix>

Topic: curses, terminfo, termcap

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Date: 10 Jul 85 00:15:09 CDT (Wed)
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry at ut-sally.ARPA
Subject: Re: curses, terminfo, and termcap

> What I think is important about curses is not the code that implements
> it (although this code was hard and it shouldn't have to be done more
> than once) but the interface between the program and the package.
> Curses is intended as a way to write portable screen oriented applications.
> ...
> I personally would like to see curses (or some appripriate subset) become
> part of the C standard, along with Standard I/O.  However, it appears that
> the committee is not planning to do this.  Lacking this, I would like to
> see it become part of a UNIX standard.

One might argue (and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I would) that a
standard screen-handling package ought to be oriented towards display of
text rather than video games.  Unless I have missed something -- I am not
all that familiar with curses -- when I insert a line in the middle of my
"screen", curses essentially has to rediscover this by comparing characters.
This seems silly; surely higher-level primitives would be better for most
situations.  (Rogue is a different story, of course.)

Something like the "FastAlpha" package described by HP a couple of Usenixes
ago would be a much better match to text-oriented screen handling, which I
would guess describes the majority of non-game curses applications.  Alas,
curses is already pretty well established; it may be too late to change.

				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry



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-- 

John B. Chambers, Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp., Austin, TX
{ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!mcc-db!jbc, jbc at ut-sally.ARPA, chambers at mcc.ARPA