*BSD News Article 98436


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From: T.E.Dickey <dickey@explorer2.clark.net>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: ncurses ???
Date: 25 Jun 1997 09:55:43 GMT
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Jason Brazile <brazile@quack.ma.utexas.edu> wrote:
: So you are saying that perhaps ncurses implements a screen painting
: strategy that makes use of capabilities that BSD curses doesn't use?
: And if my termcap entry for that capability was wrong, then that could
: explain why it doesn't work on ncurses but does with BSD curses?
right.  The erase-characters (ech) and clear to beginning of line (el1)
controls are listed in some descriptions, but don't work (probably never
made it off the implementor's to-do list).

: Could be. But it sounds like you are suggesting that your console
: termcap entry and my terminal termcap entry are both wrong. I wonder
: what percentage of all the others are wrong too :-)
I wouldn't want to guess - I can only cite the places where I've seen a
problem, and isolated the cause.

: Maybe someone could write a program that you can run to visually
: inspect all your terminal capabilities. (I have seen some that claim
: to do this, but none that really do).  Until then, I will prefer BSD 
oh - where might I find one?  (The only free test program I know of is
vttest, but that's only for VT100 & closely related terminals).  I've
thought about making a program to inspect the things in the terminfo
(or termcap) but that would be a lot of work (and hard to test).

: curses that gives me the illusion that everything just works :-)
possibly.  But some functions (such as touchwin) simply don't work
in BSD curses (ymmv).

(at the moment I'm working on some stuff that neither library handles properly)

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
dickey@clark.net
http://www.clark.net/pub/dickey