Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!oliveb!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Getting a file handle for  a non-cli window
Message-ID: <51947@sun.uucp>
Date: 4 May 88 16:41:55 GMT
References: <2370@louie.udel.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 39

In article <2370@louie.udel.EDU> rminnich@udel.EDU (Ron Minnich) writes:
>1) WHy do i want to do this?
>   Cause all the io, in lattice and manx, is in terms of file handles.
>   I just don't LIKE the console.device nonsense.
>ron (rminnich@udel.edu)

Ron has been sending these out for a bit and while I thought the answer
was fairly clear I suspect it is not. The 'simple' answer is to put a 
window pointer into the startup message of the console device when starting
it, and then jamming that value into a file handle at the appropriate place.

Basically, there are three things we are dealing with here :

CON:	       - can be opened and accessed with read(3), and write(3), 
		 as well as the stdio library. Limited to opening windows on 
		 the WORKBENCH screen.
console.device - can be opened with the AmigaDOS Open(2) call and accessed
	         with SendIO(2) and DoIO(2), etc. Normally limited to the
		 WORKBENCH but some tricks can be used (described in AmigaMail)
		 to make it open on a different screen.
Window	       - Can be opened with OpenWindow() and written to using the Text()
		 call. This is what vt100 does, the extremely patient person
	 	 could possibly turn the VT100 program into a library routine
		 for opening 'terminal' windows.

The problem with the solution above is the 'jamming' part. There is no 
officially sanctioned way to create a filehandle out of an open file
descriptor. About the only think I can think of would be to open a 
CON: window, using the ACTION_INFO packet get a pointer to the ConUnit
structure, put in the parameters from your opened console.device, and 
then send it an esc-c to get it to re-sync. Not pretty and not easy
either. (Nor is it likely to work in future versions of the OS). 

My real suggestion is to put some wrappers around the calls to the console
device to make them more usable, or rethink the problem.

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.