Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!husc6!rice!sun-spots-request
From: jao@megatest.uucp (John Oswalt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Sunview question
Message-ID: <1213@clint.megatest.UUCP>
Date: 25 Jan 89 07:13:19 GMT
Sender: usenet@rice.edu
Organization: Megatest Corporation, San Jose, Ca
Lines: 26
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
Original-Date: 18 Jan 89 21:28:37 GMT
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 119, message 11 of 13

I have a subwindow in which I display text output from a program, and in
which I echo characters typed by the user.  I do various cooking on these
characters before sending them to the program.

I would like this subwindow to be a TEXTSW, but apparently I cannot
recieve ascii events from a TEXTSW, so I have made it a CANVAS.  I can get
events from the canvas, cook the characters in an internal buffer, and use
pw_char to display the text in the canvas.  The problem with this is that
I have had to write a hell of a lot of code to insert characters, maintain
a cursor, move it around, grow the pixwin as the text in it grows, etc.
All stuff that TEXTSWs do for free.  I would like to support full
selection service stuff in this subwindow, but this is very hard, because
while I can get the pixels for any location in the canvas, I don't know
what characters they represent.  I only know the characters which are in
the current line (my cooking buffer).  It has also proved difficult to
handle long lines of entered text, because wrapping lines causes
headaches.

I am now to the point where I an willing to re-write a lot of code in
order to make this subwindow a TEXTSW like it really should be, but
getting events is still critical.  Is there a way to overlay a TEXTSW with
a CANVAS so sunview will handle the character display in the TEXTSW, but I
can still get events from the canvas?  Or, is there a way to get events
from TEXTSWs?  Is this a sun bug?

John Oswalt (..!sun!megatest!jao)