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| |
| <title>Ada95 Binding for ncurses</title> |
| <link rev="made" href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org"> |
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| <body> |
| <h1>Ada95 Binding for ncurses</h1> |
| |
| <p>by Jürgen Pfeifer.</p> |
| <hr> |
| |
| <h2>General Remarks</h2> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li>This document describes Version 01.00 of the binding.</li> |
| |
| <li>The functionality is modeled to be compatible with the |
| ncurses package, a clone of the SVr4 curses model.<br> |
| I did the development on an Intel box running the latest stable |
| release of <a href="http://www.linux.org">Linux</a>, ncurses |
| and the most recent released <a href="http://www.gnat.com">GNU |
| Ada Translator</a> gnat versions. For any older versions of |
| ncurses and gnat it is not guaranteed to work.</li> |
| |
| <li>You must have the m4 macroprocessor to build this package. |
| If you don't have this program, you can get the FSF version |
| <a href="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/">here</a>.</li> |
| |
| <li>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 <a href= |
| "ada/table.html">table</a>.</li> |
| |
| <li>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 <strong>bold</strong> of the record true. |
| The binding also hides the structures like WINDOW, PANEL, MENU, |
| FORM etc. ! It's a pure functional API.</li> |
| |
| <li>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.</li> |
| |
| <li>Support for wide characters is currently not in the |
| binding, as it is not really in ncurses at this point in |
| time.</li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <h2>Limitations</h2> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li>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.</li> |
| |
| <li>I provide no functions to switch on/off curses tracing |
| options. Same suggestion as above.</li> |
| |
| <li>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.<br> |
| 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.</li> |
| |
| <li>I currently do not support the link_fieldtype functionality |
| of the forms subsystem.</li> |
| |
| <li>The *_IO packages are currently output only.</li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <h2>Hierarchy of packages</h2> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li> |
| <a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface__ads.htm">Terminal_Interface</a> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li> |
| <a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses__ads.htm">Curses</a> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-mouse__ads.htm">Mouse</a></li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-panels__ads.htm">Panels</a> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-panels-user_data__ads.htm"> |
| User_Data</a></li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-menus__ads.htm">Menus</a> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-menus-menu_user_data__ads.htm"> |
| Menu_User_Data</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-menus-item_user_data__ads.htm"> |
| Item_User_Data</a></li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms__ads.htm">Forms</a> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-form_user_data__ads.htm"> |
| Form_User_Data</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_user_data__ads.htm"> |
| Field_User_Data</a></li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types__ads.htm"> |
| Field_Types</a> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-alpha__ads.htm"> |
| Alpha</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-alphanumeric__ads.htm"> |
| AlphaNumeric</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-intfield__ads.htm"> |
| IntField</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-numeric__ads.htm"> |
| Numeric</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-regexp__ads.htm"> |
| RegExp</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-ipv4_address__ads.htm"> |
| IPV4_Address</a></li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-enumeration__ads.htm"> |
| Enumeration</a> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-enumeration-ada__ads.htm"> |
| Ada</a></li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-user__ads.htm"> |
| User</a> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-user-choice__ads.htm"> |
| Choice</a></li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io__ads.htm">Text_IO</a> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-integer_io__ads.htm"> |
| Integer_IO</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-float_io__ads.htm"> |
| Float_IO</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-fixed_io__ads.htm"> |
| Fixed_IO</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-decimal_io__ads.htm"> |
| Decimal_IO</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-modular_io__ads.htm"> |
| Modular_IO</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-enumeration_io__ads.htm"> |
| Enumeration_IO</a></li> |
| |
| <li><a href= |
| "ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-complex_io__ads.htm"> |
| Complex_IO</a></li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <p>If you want to navigate through the html pages of the package |
| specs, click <a href="ada/index.htm">here</a>.</p> |
| |
| <h2>Implementation Details</h2> |
| |
| <h4>Behind the abstraction</h4> |
| |
| <p>All the new types like <strong>Window</strong>, |
| <strong>Panel</strong>, <strong>Menu</strong>, |
| <strong>Form</strong> etc. are just opaque representations of the |
| pointers to the corresponding low level (n)curses structures like |
| <strong>WINDOW *</strong>, <strong>PANEL *</strong>, <strong>MENU |
| *</strong> or <strong>FORM *</strong>. So you can safely pass |
| them to C routines that expect a pointer to one of those |
| structures.</p> |
| |
| <h4>Extended ripoffline() usage</h4> |
| |
| <p>The official documentation of (n)curses says, that the line |
| parameter determines only whether or not exactly |
| <strong>one</strong> 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 |
| <strong>Rip_Off_Lines</strong> routine of the binding.</p> |
| |
| <h4><a name="userpointer" id="userpointer">How user defined field |
| types work</a></h4> |
| |
| <p>TBD</p> |
| |
| <h4>Enumeration fields handling</h4> |
| |
| <p>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.</p> |
| |
| <h4><a name="compiler" id="compiler">Using other Ada |
| compilers</a></h4> |
| |
| <p>This should basically not be a problem.</p> |
| |
| <h4>Port to other curses implementations</h4> |
| |
| <p>Basically it should not be too hard to make all this run on a |
| regular SVr4 implementation of curses. The problems are probably |
| these:<br></p> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li>ncurses has some additional features which are presented in |
| this binding. You have two choices to deal with this: |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li>Emulate the feature in this binding</li> |
| |
| <li>Raise an exception for non implemented features</li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <p>Most likely you will follow a mixed approach. Some |
| features are easy to simulate, others will be hard if not |
| impossible.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <p>I'm quite sure I forgot something.</p> |
| </body> |
| </html> |
