Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!agate!darkstar!ucscb.UCSC.EDU!unknown
From: unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Curses on the GS
Message-ID: <11738@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 31 Jan 91 07:52:42 GMT
References: <430@generic.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@darkstar.ucsc.edu
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz; Open Access Computing
Lines: 33


In article <430@generic.UUCP> taob@pnet91.cts.com (Brian Tao) writes:
>From herwin@pro-novapple.cts.com (Harry Erwin):
>> I have been working on writing a GS version of curses.
>    For us non-UNIX types, could you tell us what exactly is "curses"???

	You non-UNIX people, get WITH it! Get a UNIX account somewhere!
It's great!  To not be too snotty, I actually really really like UNIX.
I keep learning more and more about it.. You can use shell scripts to
create "new" commands by using the many sophisticated current 
commands, and there's just lots of other darn neat stuff about it. These
things can probably be said about other systems, but I'm not sure.. 

	Now that I rave about UNIX, I'm probably going to give an incorrect
description of curses..

	From my understanding, curses is a set of routines that can be
used in programs independent of terminal emulation. On UNIX, I would
presume they look in an 'environment variable' (logically called 
"term"), and then look up the terminal characteristics.

	For example, in your program you could possibly say something like
"go up one character," and curses 'knows' which termtype you're using and
sends out the correct character to do this.

	You may think that porting this to the GS wouldn't be that useful
as everyone uses the same "termtype," either the text screen or the
desktop (with which I doubt curses could be used)... But with curses on the
GS you can then easily port games and other programs written on UNIX and
not have to worry about manually converting all of the curses crap.
-- 
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