cursor sensing in termcap (Re: dam (draughts, continental checkers...

[guido at boring.UUCP]

[This is cross-posted from net.games to net.unix because it really
belongs there.  Follow-up only to net.unix please.]

In article <774 at mcvax.UUCP> aeb at mcvax.UUCP (Andries Brouwer) writes:
>(Unfortunately, not all the nice
>features can be expressed in this way: there is no standard capability to
>ask for the position of the cursor.)

Hmm.  I once needed this feature and added two capabilities to termcap:
sp= the escape sequence to send to the terminal (\E`\021 for HP's),
cp= what it returns, using the same % escapes as the 'cm' capability
(\E&a%r%3c%3Y^M for HP's).  In the absence of a standard way to do it,
this could as well be declared the standard -- unless there are conflicts
with other local additions of which I am not aware.  Since termcap is
slowly being replaced by terminfo, does anyone bother?  (Is that true
altogether?  What will be in 4.3BSD?)

	Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam
	guido at mcvax.UUCP