Getchar w/wout echo

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

In article <628 at wsccs.UUCP> terry at wsccs.UUCP (Every system needs one) writes:
>In article <313 at quintus.UUCP>, ok at quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
[about Curses]
>No, we're talking curses, not something else.  Does AT&T say this package
>of which you speak is curses?

My understanding is that at least one of the Curses implementations
available for the PC is based on source code released into the public
domain by AT&T.

  But may I make a really rather elementary point?

	* "Curses" is anything which provides the "Curses" interface
	
><FFFFFFLLLLLAAAAAMMMMMEEEEE GHHHHHOOOOSSSSSSST! (like 'Space Ghost')>
>
>Urk.  "what's wrong?"?  Try Copyright AT&T.
>
I repeat, Curses is an *INTERFACE*.  I did not suggest stealing source
code; what I suggested was using the same names and interfaces for the
operations that were needed, so that on systems where Curses was
available you would be able to use the existing implementation.

>Besides, curses is seriously buggy in a number of places, like:

Quite irrelevant, as I was not advocating swiping source code, but
adapting an existing *interface*.  In fact (Every system needs one)'s
objections are mostly invalid for this reason.  (Also, he wasn't
describing the current version.)

>Internationalization is hard when most implementations use the 8th bit
>for their own nefariousness (using a short yields 9 attr bits that way).

If you're interested in internationalisation, some of the V.3 utilities
are already customisable (se "isort", for example), and V.4 is really
taking it seriously.  (8 bits just aren't enough.)  The Curses interface
in V.4 is going to be the only reasonably widespread internationalisable
(did I write that?) terminal interface around.  I still expect to loathe
it, but there just isn't anything else on offer.

If people are really worried about the size of programs on 286s, they
should be looking forward to OS/2.  With shared libraries, it is
programs which *don't* use standard interfaces which pay a storage cost!