Termcap/Terminfo questions. (He'p me please!)

Peter da Silva peter at ficc.uu.net
Tue Dec 19 07:55:25 AEST 1989


In article <178 at comcon.UUCP> tim at comcon.UUCP (Tim Brown) writes:
> Am I wrong here or are the 'non-curses' programmers reinvneting alot of
> wheels.  Is this not against unix 'phylosiphy'?

I use curses where it's appropriate, and not where it's not. There are
some things curses just can't do:

	Scrolling regions.
	Using an exotic terminal database (the referenced article
		<6300 at cogent.uucp> talks about shared memory segments)
	Stuff termcap can't support without extensions, such as
		meta-keys, special character sets, status lines,
		and variable-width terminals. Stuff terminfo can't
		handle at all...

Also, for some things curses is just too much overhead. Something like
'less', for example.
-- 
`-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. <peter at ficc.uu.net>.
 'U`  Also <peter at ficc.lonestar.org> or <peter at sugar.lonestar.org>.
"It was just dumb luck that Unix managed to break through the Stupidity Barrier
and become popular in spite of its inherent elegance." -- gavin at krypton.sgi.com



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