Which way is better in C ?

[Bill Campbell]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2005, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
>On Thu, 2005-01-20 at 20:10, Bill Campbell wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 20, 2005, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
>> >On Thu, 2005-01-20 at 15:26, Ben Duncan wrote:
>> >> While true, ncurses has a lot going, it also leaves a lot to be desired.
>> >> S-Lang has pretty much the same as ncurses, but has a lot of bases covered.
>> >> 
>> >> Example, ncurses leaves one with figuring out function key and special
>> >> key sequences return codes. S-lang simply returns a common "code" for whatever
>> >> function/special key is pressed REGARDLESS of the terminal type.
>> >
>> >ncurses does this as well. It requires that they are defined in the
>> >terminfo entry for that terminal, just like all the other definitions.
>> >They are accessed via the KEY_F(num) C macro, where num is '1' ...
>> >number of function keys.
>> >
>> >> There are several ready to use wrapper functions ready to run out of the box
>> >> in S-Lang and S-Lang comes with it's own nifty , powerful language.
>> >
>> >ncurses also has a menu and window layer. It is called something like
>> >slk. We did not use that. Only ncurses.
>> >
>> >> SLrn, jed, most, lynx, dosemu, SLirc, Red Hat installer using newt,
>> >> are all written using S-Lang and/or the S-Lang libraries.
>> >
>> >When we did character-based stuff, we used curses. The, we moved to XVT,
>> >which is a cross platform commercial product accessed from C or C++.
>> >When we went to GUIs, we opted for tcl/tk, which we are happy with as we
>> >use it as a C extension to our applications. I am not familiar with
>> >S-Lang. 
>> 
>> ``Character-based stuff'' is still far superior to GUIs for heads-down data
>> entry work where one doesn't want to have to manipulate mice, or anything
>> else that requires moving fingers from the home keys or numeric keypad.
>> Even curses based widget sets can be less efficient than programs that
>> handle the keyboard directly through curses.
>
>I fully agree. A GUI need not be all mice and menus. It depends on how
>you make the application. In our case, the system is a data collection
>control and monitoring system. It's main job is to control subsystems
>and collect data and and display the status of all. The user presses the
>occasional function key. The app has GUI written all over it.
>
>BTW, camco!bill ?? Still in use?

Possibly.  We still have one machine that handles uucp, both dialup and
tcp, but I seriously doubt that any mail has come that way in years.

Bill
--
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