Newsgroup: it.comp.os.linux.development
Titolo: Text-based user interface development

I am developing applications written in C/C++ and Perl that require
professional-looking text-based user interface. 
Does anyone know any developing kit that easily address the problem
without passing from ncurses primitives?
Regards
Davide

Davide
Lew Pitcher
Information Technology Consultant
Toronto Dominion Bank Financial Group
(
Lew_P...@tdgroup.com
)
(Opinions expressed are my own, not my employer's.)

without passing from ncurses primitives?
There are three that I know of:
 1) A package called "CDK" that provides a widget-set on top of
    ncurses.  Last time I worked on it, some of the widgets
    were buggy, and there wasn't any screen-traversal code.  I
    fixed some bugs and added a screen traversal engine, but it
    wasn't very complete.  Unless somebody has put some effort
    into it, I wouldn't recommend it for use "out-of-the-box".
 2) A package that used to be from Borland that provides a
    whole text-mode application framework (menus, windows,
    data-entry, various widgets, etc.).  IIRC, this is the
    library that Borland used for their text-mode UI in their
    IDE. Can't remember the name. Pretty complete and
    industrial-strength, as I recall, but fairly heavy-weight.
    I'd look into this one if you're developing something
    pretty full blown (e.g. database GUI with drop down menus,
    pop-up help, switching back-and-forth between two windows,
    etc.)
 3) The "newt" library from RedHat that provides a good widget
    set and layout/screen traversal routines.  Runs on top of
    slang. Fast and small, but some features may be limiting:
    you can only write to the "top" window, and you have to
    destroy the top window before you can do anything with the
    next one down.  For many types of apps, this is OK.
 
-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Yow! I'm out of
                                  at               work...I could go into
 
visi.com
            shock absorbers...or SCUBA
                                                   GEAR!!


http://dickey.his.com
ftp://dickey.his.com

 Check freshmeat (
http://freshmeat.net/
) for such tools.
I've also seen some references to A-flat, but (in spite of the posting that
indicated it was "very" portable, found only some 4-year-old code (which
had been run on 2-3 platforms).  If there's more to it than that, would be
nice to know.


stuff like that ;-)
Yea, that's the big problem with newt.  If you can find an
example that's close enough to what you want to do, it's not
too hard to figure things out, but the docs haven't been
updated in a loooong time (IIRC they don't cover any of the
geometry management stuff).
I must say the documentaion for CDK was pretty well done.
-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  By MEER biz doo
                                  at               SCHOIN...
 
visi.com
 

    data-entry, various widgets, etc.).  
Turbovision.  Last I looked at it (a couple of years ago) it seemed to
be pretty console-bound.  Had a lot of quirks running in an xterm.
-- 
 -| Bob Hauck
 -| To Whom You Are Speaking
 -| 
http://www.haucks.org/

available ("A-flat" (IIRC) comes to mind) that can be used instead.
There was a "D-Flat" from one of the DDJ columnists.  I started a port
to put it on top of ncurses, never finished it (did get the TED editor
demo to compile though).


 --


 I must say the documentaion for CDK was pretty well done.
it could be better.  (In my most recent version, I cleaned up the organization
of the manpages to make them easier to read; the next time I go that way, I'll
continue on that part).


the other called C++. 
Thanks for enlightening us, Pedantry Man!  Hey, I think I heard someone
say "centrifugal force" in another newsgroup...
-Neal Tucker