[Gambas-user] ncurses component

[Benoît Minisini]

Le 28/03/2012 21:29, tobi a écrit :
> hi,
>
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2012, tobi wrote:
>> On Mon, 26 Mar 2012, Rolf-Werner Eilert wrote:
>>>
>>> Am 25.03.2012 14:42, schrieb tobi:
>>>> Benoît,
>>>>
>>>> do you think an ncurses component would be useful? i abandoned the X server with the beginning of
>>>> the year and when i noticed that i would need a console ide for gambas, i began writing one (cut
>>>> down to my personal needs of course) using ncurses library. as it went more complicated i
>>>> appended it to the long queue of to-do projects ;)
>>>> but yesterday i realised that having an ncurses component in gambas would make things a lot easier,
>>>> the console ide could be written in gambas (what an idea!)
>>>> on the other hand: who needs ncurses nowadays? what do you think, is it a waste of time or a
>>>> valuable addition?
>>>>
>>>> (hope, the accent works, i searched about an hour for that - and can't even see the result)
>>>>
>>>> regards,
>>>> tobi
>>>>
>>>
>>> The accent works :-) And I like the ncurses idea, in fact I had such an
>>> idea some time ago. Don't remember what I wanted to do with it, but
>>> after realizing the complexity, I simply wrote some routines for colours
>>> and stuff, the rest was purely playing around a bit. Nothing serious.
>>>
>>> Rolf
>>>
>>
>> well, i'd volunteer but i can't estimate any time needed for a basically usable result.
>> i'm an 11th grade student so more important things may pop up in near future... (in case you
>> worry, i think (as a least instance) i'm capable of writing clean (concerning memory), structured
>> and reliable code -- but as the ncurses faq says, the library doesn't like to free(3) its
>> internal stuff for it may be needed later; unless you configure it to do so...)
>>
>> as soon as i figured out how to write components for gambas using the c interface, i'll start
>> anyway...
>>
>> regards,
>> tobi
>
> don't want to be annoying but:
> after having to read about those nifty configure scripts, i'm to face the first obstacle.
> this code works:
>
> -----
> ' Gambas module file
>
> Public Sub Main()
>
>    NCurses.On()
>    NCurses.Print("this is text", 10, 10)
>    NCurses.Attributes = NCurses.Bold Or NCurses.Reverse
>    Print " this is a brave test."
>    NCurses.Print("next line", , 11)
>    NCurses.WaitKey()
>    NCurses.Off()
>
> End
> -----
>
> but as the docs about programming components in c/c++ reasonably say, this is rather c-style and
> not suitable for the gambas language. (at the moment, there is one static object NCurses - i want
> to discover the api further before writing any serious classes).
>
> the Print() _function_ takes optionally x,y coordinates from which to print the text using ncurses.
> i thought, it would be better to just use the Print instruction to print text instead of this
> function all over again - this is just not aesthetic (but bearable?).
> while the Print _instruction_ works fine for that - tried also with multiple ncurses WINDOWs
> present - it always prints after the current cursor position, no matter what's there. that's the
> same with the ncurses functions, the main problem is that i turned on some attributes which are
> handled by the library, too. the text from the Print instruction doesn't get bold and video reversed.
> consequently, one may never use Print instruction to stdout in ncurses mode and this option has
> departed...
> i had the weirdest ideas of redirecting stdout, to which Print prints, to a stream object inside the
> ncurses component, reading from that and printing the data with the ncurses functions, but that's
> quite too strange...
>
> any suggestions/ideas about a suitable interface for something that fundamental? or may the above
> code fit? (i appear to not often use the ncurses mvwprintw() in any bigger thing without having
> built a wrapper around it or controlled it via a loop, so this may really fit as is...)
>
> regards,
> tobi
>

Can we talk about that on the gambas-devel mailing-list please?

-- 
Benoît Minisini