-
-Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute this
-binding by any means and for any fee, whether alone or as part
-of a larger distribution, in source or in binary form, PROVIDED
-this notice is included with any such distribution, and is not
-removed from any of its header files. Mention of ncurses and the
-author of this binding in any applications linked with it is
-highly appreciated.
-
-This binding comes AS IS with no warranty, implied or expressed.
-
-
-
General Remarks
-
-
This document describes Version 01.00 of the binding.
-
The functionality is modelled to be compatible with the ncurses
-package, a clone of the SVr4 curses model.
-I did the development on an Intel box running the latest stable release of
-Linux, ncurses and the most recent released
-GNU Ada Translator
-gnat versions. For any older versions of ncurses and gnat
-it is not guaranteed to work.
-
You must have the m4 macroprocessor to build this package.
-If you don't have this program, you can get the FSF version
-here.
-
Ada programs are supposed to be readable. One of my
-favourite methods to make code readable is to use expressive
-names for the identifiers. You can find a list of a mapping
-of the cryptic curses names to the Ada names in this table.
-
This is not a typical one-2-one interface mapping. It is
-close to one-2-one on the functional level. Each (n)curses function
-has it's counterpart with a more or less similar formal parameter list
-in the binding. It is not one-2-one with respect to the datatypes.
-I tried to make records out of the flat chtype and similar structures,
-so you don't have to do bit operations to mark an attributed character
-as bold. Just make the boolean member bold of the record
-true. The binding also hides the structures like WINDOW, PANEL, MENU, FORM
-etc. ! It's a pure functional API.
-
I try to do as much error checking as possible and feasible
-in the binding. I will raise an Ada exception when something
-went wrong in the low-level curses. This has the effect that - at least
-first time in my life - (n)curses programs have now a very rigid error
-checking, but - thanks to Ada - you don't have to code the orgiastic
-error checking style of C.
-
Support for wide characters is currently not in the binding, as it
-is not really in ncurses at this point in time.
-
-
-
-
Limitations
-
-
I provide no SCREEN datatype and functions to set a new screen.
-If you need this (mostly for debugging I guess), write a small
-C routine doing all this and import it into your Ada program.
-
I provide no functions to switch on/off curses tracing options.
-Same suggestion as above.
-
Although Ada95 is an OO Language, this binding doesn't provide
-an OO abstraction of the (n)curses functionality. As mentioned above
-it's a thin binding for the (n)curses functions. But without any
-doubt it would be nice to build on top of this an OO abstraction
-of (n)curses functionality.
-The only exception is the method how fieldtypes are represented in
-this Binding. We provide an abstract tagged type Field_Type from
-which the various fieldtypes are derived.
-
I currently do not support the link_fieldtype functionality of the
-forms subsystem.
-If you want to navigate through the html pages of the package specs, click here.
-
Implementation Details
-
Behind the abstraction
-All the new types like Window, Panel,
-Menu, Form etc. are just
-opaque representations of the pointers to the corresponding
-low level (n)curses structures like
-WINDOW *, PANEL *,
-MENU * or FORM *.
-So you can safely pass them to C routines that expect a pointer
-to one of those structures.
-
Extended ripoffline() usage
-The official documentation of (n)curses says, that the line parameter
-determines only whether or not exactly one line is
-stolen from the top or bottom of the screen. So essentially only the
-sign of the parameter is evaluated. ncurses has internally implemented
-it in a way, that uses the line parameter also to control the amount of
-lines to steal. This mechanism is used in the Rip_Off_Lines
-routine of the binding.
-
-
You must have the m4 macroprocessor to build this package.
+ If you don't have this program, you can get the FSF version
+ here.
+
+
Ada programs are supposed to be readable. One of my
+ favorite methods to make code readable is to use expressive
+ names for the identifiers. You can find a list of a mapping of
+ the cryptic curses names to the Ada names in this table.
+
+
This is not a typical one-to-one interface mapping. It is
+ close to one-to-one on the functional level. Each (n)curses
+ function has it's counterpart with a more or less similar
+ formal parameter list in the binding. It is not one-to-one with
+ respect to the datatypes. I tried to make records out of the
+ flat chtype and similar structures, so you don't have to do bit
+ operations to mark an attributed character as bold. Just make
+ the boolean member bold of the record true.
+ The binding also hides the structures like WINDOW, PANEL, MENU,
+ FORM etc. ! It's a pure functional API.
+
+
I try to do as much error checking as possible and feasible
+ in the binding. I will raise an Ada exception when something
+ went wrong in the low-level curses. This has the effect that -
+ at least first time in my life - (n)curses programs have now a
+ very rigid error checking, but - thanks to Ada - you don't have
+ to code the orgiastic error checking style of C.
+
+
Support for wide characters is currently not in the
+ binding, as it is not really in ncurses at this point in
+ time.
+
+
+
Limitations
+
+
+
I provide no SCREEN datatype and functions to set a new
+ screen. If you need this (mostly for debugging I guess), write
+ a small C routine doing all this and import it into your Ada
+ program.
+
+
I provide no functions to switch on/off curses tracing
+ options. Same suggestion as above.
+
+
Although Ada95 is an OO Language, this binding doesn't
+ provide an OO abstraction of the (n)curses functionality. As
+ mentioned above it's a thin binding for the (n)curses
+ functions. But without any doubt it would be nice to build on
+ top of this an OO abstraction of (n)curses functionality.
+ The only exception is the method how fieldtypes are represented
+ in this Binding. We provide an abstract tagged type Field_Type
+ from which the various fieldtypes are derived.
+
+
I currently do not support the link_fieldtype functionality
+ of the forms subsystem.
If you want to navigate through the html pages of the package
+ specs, click here.
+
+
Implementation Details
+
+
Behind the abstraction
+
+
All the new types like Window,
+ Panel, Menu,
+ Form etc. are just opaque representations of the
+ pointers to the corresponding low level (n)curses structures like
+ WINDOW *, PANEL *, MENU
+ * or FORM *. So you can safely pass
+ them to C routines that expect a pointer to one of those
+ structures.
+
+
Extended ripoffline() usage
+
+
The official documentation of (n)curses says, that the line
+ parameter determines only whether or not exactly
+ one line is stolen from the top or bottom of the
+ screen. So essentially only the sign of the parameter is
+ evaluated. ncurses has internally implemented it in a way, that
+ uses the line parameter also to control the amount of lines to
+ steal. This mechanism is used in the
+ Rip_Off_Lines routine of the binding.
The (n)curses documentation says, that the String arrays to be
+ passed to an TYPE_ENUM fieldtype must not be automatic variables.
+ This is not true in this binding, because it is internally
+ arranged to safely copy these values.