From: Joseph H A. <jh...@th...> - 2006-03-01 22:32:30
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From: "John M. Gabriele" <joh...@ya...> >On http://joe-editor.sourceforge.net/ it says: >"JOE is written in C and its only dependency is libc." >But you might also mention ncurses there as well. JOE does not use curses to control the terminal- it has its own code for this. The "configure" script firgured out that Ncurses was needed to read from the terminfo database, which is an undocumented binary database which requires a library to access. You can give options to "configure" to force it to use /etc/termcap instead (which is a documented text file which JOE can read directly). You don't even /etc/termcap if the terminal is ANSI (JOE has a built-in entry for ANSI terminals). Joe |
From: John M. G. <joh...@ya...> - 2006-03-02 03:55:46
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--- Joseph H Allen <jh...@th...> wrote: > From: "John M. Gabriele" <joh...@ya...> > > >On http://joe-editor.sourceforge.net/ it says: > >"JOE is written in C and its only dependency is libc." > >But you might also mention ncurses there as well. > > JOE does not use curses to control the terminal- it has its own code for > this. The "configure" script firgured out that Ncurses was needed to read > from the terminfo database, which is an undocumented binary database which > requires a library to access. You can give options to "configure" to force > it to use /etc/termcap instead (which is a documented text file which JOE > can read directly). You don't even /etc/termcap if the terminal is ANSI > (JOE has a built-in entry for ANSI terminals). > > > Joe Ah. Sorry, I hadn't read the INSTALL file carefully. Thank you. Considering what a pain it sounds like terminfo is, what's the reason for not making "--disable-curses" the default behaviour? For that matter, since JOE can parse /etc/termcap on its own, why isn't "--disable-termcap" also the default behaviour? Thanks, ---John __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com |
From: Egmont K. <eg...@uh...> - 2006-03-02 11:24:57
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On Wed, Mar 01, 2006 at 07:55:37PM -0800, John M. Gabriele wrote: > Considering what a pain it sounds like terminfo is, > what's the reason for not making "--disable-curses" > the default behaviour? > > For that matter, since JOE can parse /etc/termcap > on its own, why isn't "--disable-termcap" also the > default behaviour? Modern distributions tend to not ship /etc/termcap, only terminfo, since the latter one is much easier to maintain (especially with nowadays' package managers). Also I can't see why there would be any pain in terminfo. It's IMHO generally a much better approach and much cleaner solution and requires less code and hence less memory and is likely to be more bugfree to use a well-documented interface than to manually implement parsing a well-documented file format in each and every application. So IMHO joe's decision is quite fair here. I'm not a developer of joe, though. -- Egmont |
From: John M. G. <joh...@ya...> - 2006-03-02 17:25:14
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--- Egmont Koblinger <eg...@uh...> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 01, 2006 at 07:55:37PM -0800, John M. Gabriele wrote: > > > Considering what a pain it sounds like terminfo is, > > what's the reason for not making "--disable-curses" > > the default behaviour? > > > > For that matter, since JOE can parse /etc/termcap > > on its own, why isn't "--disable-termcap" also the > > default behaviour? > > Modern distributions tend to not ship /etc/termcap, only terminfo, since the > latter one is much easier to maintain (especially with nowadays' package > managers). On my Debian Etch system I've got terminfo. Looks like a server at an ISP that I access regularly uses Slackware which has an /etc/termcap file. From what I understand, termcap came first (Bill Joy, for vi), then later AT&T started terminfo for performance reasons (since, at that time, there were a *lot* of different terminals you might want to know about). It seems to me that, these days, no one really uses terminals anymore. Heck, I have a hard time imagining what a terminal really *is*. :) I hear they were computers with a keyboard and monitor but without the computer, but I've never used one. :) So, if life is getting *simpler*, and there's fewer terminal types to worry about, it seems there's less need for terminfo (and ncurses, if I understand this correctly). > Also I can't see why there would be any pain in terminfo. Again, if I'm understanding this correctly, why bother with a binary db plus ncurses lib when you can just have a simple text file in /etc? > It's > IMHO generally a much better approach and much cleaner solution and requires > less code and hence less memory and is likely to be more bugfree to use a > well-documented interface than to manually implement parsing a > well-documented file format in each and every application. I'll have to read up writing ncurses-like terminal programs without ncurses (I've only ever heard of using ncurses for this). It sounds to me like there should be a library that gives you an API like how ncurses does, but which automatically parses and makes use of /etc/termcap (instead of dealing with the terminfo db). Any tips/pointers? What's the simplest least-crufty way to write a full-screen text-mode program? > So IMHO joe's > decision is quite fair here. I'm not a developer of joe, though. I'm quickly getting into the habit of writing "JOE" for the name of the text editor, "Joe" for the name of the author, and "joe" for the name of the binary that I run. :) ---John > > -- > Egmont > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com |