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eCurses : an Eiffel binding to *Curses

Written by Paul G. Crismer and Eric Fafchamps.

• Targets ISE Eiffel version 4.3 (Linux or Windows).
• October 1999.
• Eiffel Forum Freeware Licence

ecurses.tgz (112 kbytes) - source code
ecurses.txt (15 kbytes) - Documentation

eCurses : an Eiffel binding to *Curses

Abstract

This version of eCurses has been developed and tested with:

• ISE Eiffel version 4.3 (Linux or Windows)
• Linux : NCURSES 4.2
  Windows : PDCurses 2.4

Introduction

ECurses is an Eiffel binding to Curses. It is intended to be sufficiently complete to enable people write terminal/console applications in Eiffel.

The following table gives an overview of what ECurses provides, compared to the Curses library.

+------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+
|Curses                              | ECurses | Eiffel Class           |
+------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+
+------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+
|Curses core                         | Partial | CURSES_WINDOW          |
|* color                             | Yes     |                        |
|* character attributes              | Yes     |                        |
|* subwindows                        | Yes     |                        |
|* scrolling                         | Yes     |                        |
|* mouse interfacing                 | No      |                        |
|* multiple terminal screens         | No      |                        |
|* testing for terminal capabilities | No      |                        |
+------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+
|Pads                                | Partial | CURSES_PAD             |
+------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+
|Soft label keys                     | Yes     | CURSES_SOFT_LABEL_KEYS |
+------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+
|Panels                              | Yes     | CURSES_PANEL           |
+------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+
|Menu                                | No      |                        |
+------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+
|Forms                               | No      |                        |
+------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+

ECurses introduces some level of abstraction. Feature names try to be more explicit than their Curses counterpart. When possible pre- and post-conditions reflect the features specifications.

ECurses has not been ``extensively'' tested. Though, it works sufficiently well to develop applications with color, scrolling, multiple panels, and basic forms.

This document is not a Curses manual. Please refer to appropriate man pages or to the excellent article ``Writing programs with NCURSES'' by Eric S. Raymond and Zeyd M. Ben-Halim.

Installation

1. Unpack directory structure

   Simply extract the tarball. Directory structure is described below :

   + base 		-- base Curses abstractions.
   |
   + doc		-- Documentation in various formats
   |
   + spec 		-- API and constants wrapping classes.
   | |
   | + Clib 	-- c source files.
   | |
   | + linux 	-- linux specific files.
   | |
   | + windows 	-- windows specific file.s
   |
   + utility 	-- some classes found useful to develop eCurses applications
   |            	   like an event manager and a frame panel.
   |
   + test 		-- small test projects.
     |
     + hello 	-- hello world !
     |
     + pad 	-- exercise basic pad capabilities.
     |
     + slk 	-- exercise soft label keys.
     |
     + curses 	-- mimics the 'ncurses' standard test application.
   

2. Get the appropriate Curses library

   Get and install the appropriate Curses library.

   • NCURSES Version 4.2. http://www.gnu.org. Work on Unix/Linux platforms.

   • PDCurses Version 2.4. http://www.lightlink.com/hessling. Works on Windows 9X and Windows NT. PDCurses also offer an X11 implementation for Unix, but it has not been tested with the ECurses library.
     !!WARNING : PDCurses has to be patched. Please refer to the documentation.

3. Compile support library

   C files are in the spec/Clib directory. The spec/<platform> directory contains ad hoc makefiles.

   windows A makefile (Makefile.vc.mak) is provided for MSVC compiler. Library name is ecurses_c.lib.

   linux A makefile (Makefile) is provided for Linux . Type "make all" in order to build the library libecurses_c.a.

   This support library is necessary to compile and link eCurses programs.

4. Documentation

   Documentation is available

5. Copyright

   Copyright (C) 1999 by Paul G. Crismer <pgcrism@attglobal.net> and Eric Fafchamps <eric.fafchamps@win.be>.

   This document and the eCurses library are licensed under the terms of the Eiffel Forum Freeware License, version 1. Please refer to http://www.eiffel-forum.org.

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