Suggested Topic

[Edward Glowacki]

On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Alex Morris wrote:
> I doubt people would want to do this (it's really a programmer thing...) but 
> a tutorial on how to use ncurses would be nice.  I've tried playing with it 
> for several hours, I never was able to figure out how to hide the cursor...  
> For us people that like the console much more than X (and I think we're 
> almost all in that boat) a tutorial on ncurses would rock.
> 
> Maybe this is better done elsewhere as many GLLUG members are not 
> programmers.  Your call.
> 
> - Alex Morris

Yeah, this one would probably be better done elsewhere.  I think
some of our programming presentations, while interesting, tend to
stray from the issues of Linux a bit.

My advice to anyone who is serious about programing is to take some
formal classes, or at least do a lot of reading about programming
technique, not language-specific stuff but general theory.  Picking
up a bit of language at a LUG meeting is fine for small stuff, but
when you get to larger projects, specifically ones that other people
end up relying on or that get distributed elsewhere, you really
should have a stronger base to build from.  And once you understand
the structure of programming, it's easy to map your knowledge of
theory to its implementation in your language of choice.

As far as ncurses goes, I'm also a big fan of character mode
interfaces, though I still use X all the time (mostly filled with
xterms and a web browser).  I've done some programming in ncurses,
and fiddled with the PyNcurses interface to python.  I don't know
how to solve your specific problem of hiding the cursor though.

One of the big things I think the Unix world needs is a good, solid
character mode interface toolkit.  Ncurses (with all the form and
panel libraries) is getting better, but it's still not the easiest
or most complete thing in the world to try programming with.  I've
tried writing my own windowing library on top of it, but I never
was happy with the outcome, probably because of my inability to
program properly at the time.. ;)


-- 
Edward Glowacki			glowack2@msu.edu
Network Services		
Michigan State University