Re: tn3270, mset and map3270

[David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Mon, Mar 01, 2010 at 08:40:40AM -0500, der Mouse wrote:
 >>> An interface is what provides compatibility and portability.
 >> Yes.  The *interface* is called "curses".  How about we hunt down and
 >> kill off all the programs that still use *either* raw termcap or raw
 >> terminfo?
 > 
 > For what it may be worth, in my opinion that would be a crippling
 > regression.
 > 
 > One of the programs I use most heavily day-to-day uses termcap directly
 > and, while it might be possible to adapt it to a curses-only interface,
 > it would be rather difficult and would involve at least a little
 > functionality loss (possibly more; I wouldn't know without trying).

What does it do?

I tend to think of curses as a regression relative to e.g. DOS <conio.h>,
but it does mostly cover the territory for full-screen apps.

(The most glaring omission is that you can't use the input key
handling with select/poll; next is probably that you can't do raw key
up/down input; and it would be nice if there were a clearly defined
portable way to make SIGWINCH handling behave. But using raw termcap
doesn't exactly improve the experience for any of these cases.)

Admittedly, there should be some kind of curses-like library for
line-mode apps, but we could write that.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost