- The refresh and wrefresh routines (or wnoutrefresh and
- doupdate) must be called to get actual output to the ter-
+ The refresh and wrefresh routines (or wnoutrefresh and
+ doupdate) must be called to get actual output to the ter-
minal, as other routines merely manipulate data struc-
- tures. The routine wrefresh copies the named window to
+ tures. The routine wrefresh copies the named window to
the physical terminal screen, taking into account what is
- already there in order to do optimizations. The refresh
- routine is the same, using stdscr as the default window.
- Unless leaveok has been enabled, the physical cursor of
- the terminal is left at the location of the cursor for
- that window.
-
- The wnoutrefresh and doupdate routines allow multiple
- updates with more efficiency than wrefresh alone. In
- addition to all the window structures, curses keeps two
+ already there to do optimizations. The refresh routine is
+ the same, using stdscr as the default window. Unless
+ leaveok has been enabled, the physical cursor of the ter-
+ minal is left at the location of the cursor for that win-
+ dow.
+
+ The wnoutrefresh and doupdate routines allow multiple
+ updates with more efficiency than wrefresh alone. In
+ addition to all the window structures, curses keeps two
data structures representing the terminal screen: a physi-
cal screen, describing what is actually on the screen, and
a virtual screen, describing what the programmer wants to
have on the screen.
- The routine wrefresh works by first calling wnoutrefresh,
+ The routine wrefresh works by first calling wnoutrefresh,
which copies the named window to the virtual screen, and
- then calling doupdate, which compares the virtual screen
+ then calling doupdate, which compares the virtual screen
to the physical screen and does the actual update. If the
programmer wishes to output several windows at once, a
- series of calls to wrefresh results in alternating calls
- to wnoutrefresh and doupdate, causing several bursts of
- output to the screen. By first calling wnoutrefresh for
- each window, it is then possible to call doupdate once,
+ series of calls to wrefresh results in alternating calls
+ to wnoutrefresh and doupdate, causing several bursts of
+ output to the screen. By first calling wnoutrefresh for
+ each window, it is then possible to call doupdate once,
resulting in only one burst of output, with fewer total
- characters transmitted and less CPU time used. If the win
- argument to wrefresh is the global variable curscr, the
+ characters transmitted and less CPU time used. If the win
+ argument to wrefresh is the global variable curscr, the
screen is immediately cleared and repainted from scratch.
The phrase "copies the named window to the virtual screen"
above is ambiguous. What actually happens is that all
- touched (changed) lines in the window are copied to the
+ touched (changed) lines in the window are copied to the
virtual screen. This affects programs that use overlap-
ping windows; it means that if two windows overlap, you
can refresh them in either order and the overlap region
will be modified only when it is explicitly changed. (But
- see the section on PORTABILITY below for a warning about
+ see the section on PORTABILITY below for a warning about
exploiting this behavior.)
- The wredrawln routine indicates to curses that some screen
+ The wredrawln routine indicates to curses that some screen
lines are corrupted and should be thrown away before any-
thing is written over them. It touches the indicated
- lines (marking them changed). The routine redrawwin()
+ lines (marking them changed). The routine redrawwin()
touches the entire window.
RETURN VALUE
- Routines that return an integer return ERR upon failure,
- and OK (SVr4 only specifies "an integer value other than
- ERR") upon successful completion.
+ Routines that return an integer return ERR upon failure,
+ and OK (SVr4 only specifies "an integer value other than
+ ERR") upon successful completion.
NOTES
- Note that refresh and redrawwin may be macros.
+ Note that refresh and redrawwin may be macros.
@@ -90,19 +128,19 @@
The XSI Curses standard, Issue 4 describes these func-
tions.
- Whether wnoutrefresh() copies to the virtual screen the
+ Whether wnoutrefresh() copies to the virtual screen the
entire contents of a window or just its changed portions
has never been well-documented in historic curses versions
(including SVr4). It might be unwise to rely on either
behavior in programs that might have to be linked with
other curses implementations. Instead, you can do an
- explicit touchwin() before the wnoutrefresh() call to
+ explicit touchwin() before the wnoutrefresh() call to
guarantee an entire-contents copy anywhere.