Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 7 Oct 1998 09:40:14 +0200 (SAT)
From:      Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com>
To:        matthew@wolfepub.com (Matthew Hagerty)
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Direct to video memory?
Message-ID:  <199810070740.JAA04386@ceia.nordier.com>
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19981006195057.007ccc90@firebat.wolfepub.com> from Matthew Hagerty at "Oct 6, 98 07:50:57 pm"

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Matthew Hagerty wrote:
> 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)?

Drop that idea: it's not even an option.

> 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.

The essential idea of curses if that your application will do the best
job it can of running on *any* hardware (not just a PC with a VGA, etc).

Curses isn't particularly slow, especially if the application does
things "idiomatically" (ie. taking the curses way of doing things into
account).  I've found it quite usable for high speed data entry even
running on a 80386.  You probably just need to look at how some similar
application does things with curses.

-- 
Robert Nordier

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199810070740.JAA04386>