From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Oct 7 00:42:15 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id AAA04671 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 00:42:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from ceia.nordier.com (slip139-92-122-84.joh.za.ibm.net [139.92.122.84]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA04577 for ; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 00:41:31 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rnordier@nordier.com) Received: (from rnordier@localhost) by ceia.nordier.com (8.8.7/8.6.12) id JAA04386; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 09:40:16 +0200 (SAT) From: Robert Nordier Message-Id: <199810070740.JAA04386@ceia.nordier.com> Subject: Re: Direct to video memory? In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19981006195057.007ccc90@firebat.wolfepub.com> from Matthew Hagerty at "Oct 6, 98 07:50:57 pm" To: matthew@wolfepub.com (Matthew Hagerty) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 09:40:14 +0200 (SAT) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL31 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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