Sun Jul 9 00:19:23 2000 Random remarks about the ncurses support for GoldEd+ by Jacobo Tarrio, 2:348/105.93@fidonet This version of GoldEd+ bears the fifth public release of the ncurses implementation of its video code; it's still considered beta, so expect some strange behaviour while it is being completed. It is being done in order to allow any Unix clone with ncurses installed (and, probably, any implementation of curses) to run GoldEd+, independently of the character set used by the system and of the terminal type; GoldEd+ will run fine from the console with a cyrillic character set, from a xterm with the iso-8859-1 character set, or from a monochrome VT-100 dumb terminal. It might even be possible in the near future to use GoldEd+ compiled for DOS, Win32 or OS/2, and linked with PDCurses. This file tries to list some already known bugs along with other nasty "features" of the code. Expect most of these bugs to disappear and a lot of fresh new ones to show up in the next public release of the ncurses support :-) However, I do not always succeed, so, old, already existing bugs are marked with '!', whilst new ones are marked with '*'. If you find any bug not listed here, please report to Jacobo Tarrio, 2:348/105.93@fidonet ASAP to get it fixed soon, or, even better, fix it yourself and send me the patch :-) === 2000-07-09: Fifth public release Known bugs: * None 8-) Notes: * Changed function key management to work as expected in Debian Potato. That's all I can do. I will do no more. Reason: function keys are not portable - repeat - they are not portable. === 2000-04-19: Fourth public release Known bugs: ! Messages from the program viewed before entering full-screen are not displayed properly Notes: * I'm downgrading this one from bug to note: "Screen may become corrupted if someone other than GoldEd+ writes on the terminal". As it happens with other platforms too, I'm considering it no longer a ncurses-specific bug. * Trouble with your function keys? I'm sorry but I cannot help it. Every kind of terminal manages function keys differently, so they cannot be relied upon. Well, there IS a way to get function keys et.al. reliably and all, but that would make GoldED+ unportable, bloated and fragile, and neither I nor you want it, do you? Workaround: map these functions to regular keys. === 2000-02-17: Third public release Known bugs: ! Statusline displays a couple of odd characters (after GoldEd+'s name and before the current time) ! Screen may become corrupted if someone other than GoldEd+ writes on the terminal ! Messages from the program viewed before entering full-screen are not displayed properly * The cursor grows very big every 30 seconds when editing a message (possible reincarnation of a similar bug in former versions) * The splash screen looks ugly, but not as much as before :) Notes: * ESCDELAY is now set by default to 50ms. If it is too short for you, you can set the ESCDELAY environment variable to override it (under ncurses). It must hold an integer value representing the delay in milliseconds. Quite useful over wide area network links or on very-very-i-really-mean-it slow terminals. Undocumented in ncurses 4, but functional. Documented in ncurses 5 and above (I believe). === 2000-02-05: Second public release Known bugs: ! The splash screen looks a bit ugly :-) ! The cursor disappears every 30 seconds when editing a message * Statusline displays a couple of odd characters (after GoldEd+'s name and before the current time) * Screen may become corrupted if someone other than GoldEd+ writes on the terminal * Messages from the program viewed before entering full-screen are not displayed properly Notes: * I have "ment" the escape key affair (see below) by using some sort of ncurses version detection and the so. If this misfeature (for I'm sure it is going to give more trouble than good) annoys you, you can change the delay after escape by modifying the "ESCDELAY = 50;" assignment at the file 'goldlib/gall/gkbdbase.cpp', or by commenting it out. Anyway, you should perhaps be able, with this default setting, to "press" ALT on terminals that don't have this, by pressing ESC and the desired key very quickly :-) === 2000-01-25: First public release Known bugs: * Tab key does not work properly * Boxes are seen fine (at least with Latin-1) but lines are still drawn with hyphens (-), plus signs (+), vertical lines (|) and the so. * The splash screen looks a bit ugly :-) * The box in the screensaver leaves traces when moving * The cursor disappears every 30 seconds when editing a message Notes: * When pressing the escape key, you must wait for 1 second for GoldEd+ to take action. This is due to the way most terminals send function keys and keypad presses; they send ESC followed by some characters, and curses waits for these characters to arrive. There is a way to shorten the timeout to, say, 30ms, which is suitable for a 300-baud terminal and still too fast for humans to notice, but it would make GoldEd+ dependant of a particular implementation of curses, and of a particular version of that implementation; also, it would make GoldEd+ unusable over a network or with some dumb terminals or terminal emulators; this way you can press ESC followed immediately by an A to "press" ALT-A.