Re: how to avoid ncurses for a small app.

[Thomas Dickey]

On Sun, 4 Jun 2006, chinlu chinawa wrote:

> > It would be a lot of work.  Assembler's fine for embedded (really
> > embedded) applications or real-time monitoring, but for accessing
> > files it's likely to be lots of work.
>
>
> Well it isn't so worrying to me to access files and handle them, as to be
> able to do what I want.
>
> Could you please roughly describe the process for me?

ncurses reads a data structure from the file; it's in used in the 
read_entry.c file and (mostly(*)) documented in the term (7) manpage.

reading termcap would actually be more work, since you'd have to write a 
parser for the termcap data - terminfo is already parsed.

> As far as I understand, I could use either terminfo (more difficult but more
> powerfull, such as for apps. that need to control cursor position, etc.), or
> termcap, which is less flexible but eassier and simpler.

(*) ncurses 5 uses some extensions to terminfo which work by looking past 
the predefined capabilities, and interpreting data therein - see the logic 
in read_entry.c for clues.  It hadn't occurred to me previously that it 
would be nice to document the details in that manpage as well...

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net