Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!mailrus!uwmcsd1!marque!uunet!pyrdc!ISIDAPS5!mike
From: mike@ISIDAPS5.UUCP (Mike Maloney)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: curses under Xenix
Keywords: curses, termcap, terminfo
Message-ID: <213@ISIDAPS5.UUCP>
Date: 21 Jul 88 15:20:33 GMT
Lines: 33


I've been using curses to write a windowing system for a real-time
data aquisition system.  The system will primarily run on one of the 
console terminals (tty01 - tty12), and I'd like to take advantage of
some of the nifty display features such as color and graphics characters.

I have found that if I uses the termcap version of curses, I can use
graphics characters (for boxes, lines, etc.), but I am limited to two
color attributes: standout, and normal.  By sending escape sequences
to the console at initialization, I can define 'standout' and 'normal'
to be any colors I want.

However, I would like to use the terminfo version for compatibility
with other System V Unixes.  I am stymied in my attempts to display
graphics characters with terminfo.  This is presumably because 
<tinfo.h> defines the attribute A_STANDOUT as 000200, the high bit 
of the character ('graphics' characters in the extended ASCII set on
the PC all have this bit set).  I have tried or'ing in A_ALTCHARSET 
rather than the A_STANDOUT bit to no avail.

Let's face it, boxes of hyphens, equal-signs, and pipe-characters
look pretty grungy compared to other workstation windowing displays.
Does anybody out there know how I can have my cake and eat it too?
Also, when and how will curses support color?  Is SCO going to phase
out the termcap version when their merge product comes out in the fall?

Thanks in advance for any helpful info.

-- 

Mike Maloney				"The nice thing about standards
Integral Systems, Inc.			 is that there are so many to
Lanham Maryland				 choose from"  - Murphy