2 ****************************************************************************
3 * Copyright (c) 1998-2013,2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc. *
5 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a *
6 * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the *
7 * "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including *
8 * without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, *
9 * distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell *
10 * copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is *
11 * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: *
13 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included *
14 * in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. *
16 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS *
17 * OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF *
18 * MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. *
19 * IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, *
20 * DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR *
21 * OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR *
22 * THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. *
24 * Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright *
25 * holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the *
26 * sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written *
28 ****************************************************************************
29 * @Id: curs_initscr.3x,v 1.20 2014/03/01 22:31:22 tom Exp @
31 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
34 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
35 <meta name="generator" content="Manpage converted by man2html - see http://invisible-island.net/scripts/readme.html#others_scripts">
36 <TITLE>curs_initscr 3x</TITLE>
37 <link rev=made href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org">
38 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
41 <H1 class="no-header">curs_initscr 3x</H1>
43 <STRONG><A HREF="curs_initscr.3x.html">curs_initscr(3x)</A></STRONG> <STRONG><A HREF="curs_initscr.3x.html">curs_initscr(3x)</A></STRONG>
49 <H2><a name="h2-NAME">NAME</a></H2><PRE>
50 <STRONG>initscr</STRONG>, <STRONG>newterm</STRONG>, <STRONG>endwin</STRONG>, <STRONG>isendwin</STRONG>, <STRONG>set_term</STRONG>, <STRONG>delscreen</STRONG> -
51 <STRONG>curses</STRONG> screen initialization and manipulation routines
55 <H2><a name="h2-SYNOPSIS">SYNOPSIS</a></H2><PRE>
56 <STRONG>#include</STRONG> <STRONG><curses.h></STRONG>
58 <STRONG>WINDOW</STRONG> <STRONG>*initscr(void);</STRONG>
59 <STRONG>int</STRONG> <STRONG>endwin(void);</STRONG>
60 <STRONG>bool</STRONG> <STRONG>isendwin(void);</STRONG>
61 <STRONG>SCREEN</STRONG> <STRONG>*newterm(char</STRONG> <STRONG>*type,</STRONG> <STRONG>FILE</STRONG> <STRONG>*outfd,</STRONG> <STRONG>FILE</STRONG> <STRONG>*infd);</STRONG>
62 <STRONG>SCREEN</STRONG> <STRONG>*set_term(SCREEN</STRONG> <STRONG>*new);</STRONG>
63 <STRONG>void</STRONG> <STRONG>delscreen(SCREEN*</STRONG> <STRONG>sp);</STRONG>
67 <H2><a name="h2-DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a></H2><PRE>
68 <STRONG>initscr</STRONG> is normally the first <STRONG>curses</STRONG> routine to call when
69 initializing a program. A few special routines sometimes
70 need to be called before it; these are <STRONG>slk_init</STRONG>, <STRONG>filter</STRONG>,
71 <STRONG>ripoffline</STRONG>, <STRONG>use_env</STRONG>. For multiple-terminal applications,
72 <STRONG>newterm</STRONG> may be called before <STRONG>initscr</STRONG>.
74 The initscr code determines the terminal type and initial-
75 izes all <STRONG>curses</STRONG> data structures. <STRONG>initscr</STRONG> also causes the
76 first call to <STRONG>refresh</STRONG> to clear the screen. If errors oc-
77 cur, <STRONG>initscr</STRONG> writes an appropriate error message to stan-
78 dard error and exits; otherwise, a pointer is returned to
79 <STRONG>stdscr</STRONG>.
81 A program that outputs to more than one terminal should
82 use the <STRONG>newterm</STRONG> routine for each terminal instead of
83 <STRONG>initscr</STRONG>. A program that needs to inspect capabilities, so
84 it can continue to run in a line-oriented mode if the ter-
85 minal cannot support a screen-oriented program, would also
86 use <STRONG>newterm</STRONG>. The routine <STRONG>newterm</STRONG> should be called once
87 for each terminal. It returns a variable of type <STRONG>SCREEN</STRONG> <STRONG>*</STRONG>
88 which should be saved as a reference to that terminal.
89 <STRONG>newterm</STRONG>'s arguments are
91 <STRONG>o</STRONG> the <EM>type</EM> of the terminal to be used in place of <STRONG>$TERM</STRONG>,
93 <STRONG>o</STRONG> a file pointer for output to the terminal, and
95 <STRONG>o</STRONG> another file pointer for input from the terminal
97 If the <EM>type</EM> parameter is <STRONG>NULL</STRONG>, <STRONG>$TERM</STRONG> will be used.
99 The program must also call <STRONG>endwin</STRONG> for each terminal being
100 used before exiting from <STRONG>curses</STRONG>. If <STRONG>newterm</STRONG> is called
101 more than once for the same terminal, the first terminal
102 referred to must be the last one for which <STRONG>endwin</STRONG> is
105 A program should always call <STRONG>endwin</STRONG> before exiting or es-
106 caping from <STRONG>curses</STRONG> mode temporarily. This routine
108 <STRONG>o</STRONG> restores tty modes,
110 <STRONG>o</STRONG> moves the cursor to the lower left-hand corner of the
113 <STRONG>o</STRONG> resets the terminal into the proper non-visual mode.
115 Calling <STRONG>refresh</STRONG> or <STRONG>doupdate</STRONG> after a temporary escape caus-
116 es the program to resume visual mode.
118 The <STRONG>isendwin</STRONG> routine returns <STRONG>TRUE</STRONG> if <STRONG>endwin</STRONG> has been
119 called without any subsequent calls to <STRONG>wrefresh</STRONG>, and <STRONG>FALSE</STRONG>
122 The <STRONG>set_term</STRONG> routine is used to switch between different
123 terminals. The screen reference <STRONG>new</STRONG> becomes the new cur-
124 rent terminal. The previous terminal is returned by the
125 routine. This is the only routine which manipulates
126 <STRONG>SCREEN</STRONG> pointers; all other routines affect only the cur-
129 The <STRONG>delscreen</STRONG> routine frees storage associated with the
130 <STRONG>SCREEN</STRONG> data structure. The <STRONG>endwin</STRONG> routine does not do
131 this, so <STRONG>delscreen</STRONG> should be called after <STRONG>endwin</STRONG> if a par-
132 ticular <STRONG>SCREEN</STRONG> is no longer needed.
136 <H2><a name="h2-RETURN-VALUE">RETURN VALUE</a></H2><PRE>
137 <STRONG>endwin</STRONG> returns the integer <STRONG>ERR</STRONG> upon failure and <STRONG>OK</STRONG> upon
138 successful completion.
140 Routines that return pointers always return <STRONG>NULL</STRONG> on error.
142 X/Open defines no error conditions. In this implementa-
145 <STRONG>o</STRONG> <STRONG>endwin</STRONG> returns an error if the terminal was not ini-
148 <STRONG>o</STRONG> <STRONG>newterm</STRONG> returns an error if it cannot allocate the da-
149 ta structures for the screen, or for the top-level
150 windows within the screen, i.e., <STRONG>curscr</STRONG>, <STRONG>newscr</STRONG>, or
151 <STRONG>stdscr</STRONG>.
153 <STRONG>o</STRONG> <STRONG>set_term</STRONG> returns no error.
157 <H2><a name="h2-NOTES">NOTES</a></H2><PRE>
158 Note that <STRONG>initscr</STRONG> and <STRONG>newterm</STRONG> may be macros.
162 <H2><a name="h2-PORTABILITY">PORTABILITY</a></H2><PRE>
163 These functions are described in the XSI Curses standard,
164 Issue 4. It specifies that portable applications must not
165 call <STRONG>initscr</STRONG> more than once.
167 Old versions of curses, e.g., BSD 4.4, may have returned a
168 null pointer from <STRONG>initscr</STRONG> when an error is detected,
169 rather than exiting. It is safe but redundant to check
170 the return value of <STRONG>initscr</STRONG> in XSI Curses.
172 If the TERM variable is missing or empty, <STRONG>initscr</STRONG> uses the
173 value "unknown", which normally corresponds to a terminal
174 entry with the <EM>generic</EM> (<EM>gn</EM>) capability. Generic entries
175 are detected by <STRONG><A HREF="curs_terminfo.3x.html">curs_terminfo(3x)</A></STRONG> and cannot be used for full-
176 screen operation. Other implementations may handle a
177 missing/empty TERM variable differently.
181 <H2><a name="h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></H2><PRE>
182 <STRONG><A HREF="ncurses.3x.html">curses(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="curs_kernel.3x.html">curs_kernel(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="curs_refresh.3x.html">curs_refresh(3x)</A></STRONG>,
183 <STRONG><A HREF="curs_slk.3x.html">curs_slk(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="curs_terminfo.3x.html">curs_terminfo(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="curs_util.3x.html">curs_util(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG>curs_vari-</STRONG>
184 <STRONG><A HREF="curs_variables.3x.html">ables(3x)</A></STRONG>.
188 <STRONG><A HREF="curs_initscr.3x.html">curs_initscr(3x)</A></STRONG>
192 <li><a href="#h2-NAME">NAME</a></li>
193 <li><a href="#h2-SYNOPSIS">SYNOPSIS</a></li>
194 <li><a href="#h2-DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a></li>
195 <li><a href="#h2-RETURN-VALUE">RETURN VALUE</a></li>
196 <li><a href="#h2-NOTES">NOTES</a></li>
197 <li><a href="#h2-PORTABILITY">PORTABILITY</a></li>
198 <li><a href="#h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></li>