Subject: Re: bin/6661: [PATCH] Worms: curses conversion patch
To: None <jsm28@cam.ac.uk>
From: ITOH Yasufumi <yasufu-i@is.aist-nara.ac.jp>
List: netbsd-bugs
Date: 12/28/1998 19:28:01
In article <E0zuOzU-0001cx-00@decomino.localnet>
jsm28@cam.ac.uk writes:

> The appended patch converts worms(6) to use curses, thereby
> simplifying the code and improving its portability.  It also adds a

I don't think curses is better than termcap, at least for now.

Except for Linux, whose termcap has short "ospeed" variable (not int),
I don't know any portability problems on the termcap interface.
SysV curses also have termcap interface.

On the other hand, curses has many problems and should be avoided if possible.
  o not 8-bit clean on many implementation,
  o too big in size and overhead compared to termcap,
  o some implementation of curses use alarm signal for timeout and
    can't be used with some other library functions including
    many implementation of usleep(),
  o actually not portable -- (old) BSD and SysV ones are different.

Of course, we should have true I18N curses....

Any opinions and corrections are welcome.
--
ITOH, Yasufumi <yasufu-i@is.aist-nara.ac.jp>, <itohy@netbsd.org>