Ken Hornstein <kenh(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com> writes:
- Can we use curses? Short answer: no.
Check.
- Can we use terminfo? Short answer: maybe.
My gut feeling is that terminfo seems to be what people have converged
to using. It's not apparant at first glance how you translate a terminfo
capability to the actual output characters, but let's assume it's
possible (hm, looks like what you do is tparm()/tputs()). So that
would mean we'd have to add a fair number of format functions that
would do the various terminfo stuff, but maybe that wouldn't be so
bad.
I was envisioning just one function, that takes the terminfo symbolic
name of a capability and gives back the actual string.
- Can we just stick with the original idea of outputting escape characters?
Well ... maybe. The problem is the limitation of the format language.
For example, you can't have an argument to a function which contains
a ')' character. Maybe that isn't a concern. We might need two new
format functions, ones that turn "zero width" mode on and off (and
thus two new format instructions).
Good point. I'm inclined to think that it's a good idea to provide this
even if we also provide the terminfo-accessing function, since there is
always going to be somebody who wants to do something that doesn't fit
into what (his) terminfo knows.
regards, tom lane
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