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Date:      Tue, 06 Oct 1998 18:44:54 -0700
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        Matthew Hagerty <matthew@wolfepub.com>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Direct to video memory? 
Message-ID:  <199810070144.SAA02548@dingo.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 06 Oct 1998 19:50:57 EDT." <3.0.5.32.19981006195057.007ccc90@firebat.wolfepub.com> 

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> Greetings,
> 
> I was wondering if it is a bad practice to write directly to video memory
> (i.e. B800) for client applications that are intended to run in a text mode
> (no X)?

Yes, extremely.  It makes it impossible to use the application via eg. 
a telnet connection or serial terminal.

> I have written several applications in DOS (text based business apps,
> point-of-sale mostly) and I would like to port them to FreeBSD.  I have
> checked and played with ncurses and find it a little slow.  Is there
> another lib somewhere that handles color, full cursor control, and the
> extended ACSII set (line chars)?  I would like to replace my current
> DOS-to-Novell system with a pure FreeBSD solution for the clients and server.

It sounds like you would do best to look at why your screen output is 
"a little slow"; ncurses is actually pretty quick when used correctly.

(The catch lies in 'correctly', of course. 8)

I'm not quite (at all) a guru when it comes to curses work, but I'm 
sure that someone here can point you in the direction of a tutorial or 
book that will give you some better advice.  Meantime, the biggest 
speed killer with curses is calling refresh() too often; you don't want 
to do this any more often than necessary to make the interface work.

-- 
\\  Sometimes you're ahead,       \\  Mike Smith
\\  sometimes you're behind.      \\  mike@smith.net.au
\\  The race is long, and in the  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\  end it's only with yourself.  \\  msmith@cdrom.com



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