[comp.unix.wizards] need help with 'curses'

jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers) (06/12/90)

In article <23415@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>, qt@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Quan Tang) writes:
> 
> 	I am going to use 'curses', but  I have no references except man pages,
> I will appreciate it very much if any unix expert send me some information about
> it including your experience.

O'Reilly & Associates (981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164) has
two very well-written books:
	"Programming with Curses" by John Strang
	"Termcap and Terminfo" by John Strang, Tim O'Reilly and Linda Mui

You should rush right out and get a copy of both.  Put your name all
over them right away, because every programmer in the vicinity will
try to steal them.  They are about two orders of magnitude better 
than anything else I've seen on the subject.  Of course, if someone
knows of anything as good or better, I'd like to hear about it.

-- 
Uucp: ...!{harvard.edu,ima.com,mit-eddie.edu}!minya!jc (John Chambers)
Home: 1-617-484-6393
Work: 1-508-952-3274
Cute-Saying: It's never to late to have a happy childhood.

swope@hpindda.HP.COM (Darrell Swope) (06/13/90)

/ hpindda:comp.unix.wizards / jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers) /  6:58 pm  Jun 11, 1990 /
In article <23415@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>, qt@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Quan Tang) writes:
> 
> 	I am going to use 'curses', but  I have no references except man pages,
> I will appreciate it very much if any unix expert send me some information about
> it including your experience.

O'Reilly & Associates (981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164) has
two very well-written books:
	"Programming with Curses" by John Strang
	"Termcap and Terminfo" by John Strang, Tim O'Reilly and Linda Mui

You should rush right out and get a copy of both.  Put your name all
over them right away, because every programmer in the vicinity will
try to steal them.  They are about two orders of magnitude better 
than anything else I've seen on the subject.  Of course, if someone
knows of anything as good or better, I'd like to hear about it.

-- 
Uucp: ...!{harvard.edu,ima.com,mit-eddie.edu}!minya!jc (John Chambers)
Home: 1-617-484-6393
Work: 1-508-952-3274
Cute-Saying: It's never to late to have a happy childhood.
----------

martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) (06/15/90)

In article <4470014@hpindda.HP.COM> swope@hpindda.HP.COM (Darrell Swope) writes:
[question about curses deleted]
>
>O'Reilly & Associates (981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164) has
>two very well-written books:
>	"Programming with Curses" by John Strang

A nice book from which you might learn a lot.
It's a pitty that it's not quite uptodate with respect
to SysV Curses. At least the one I have only deals with
the old Ken Arnold Curses, though there's a promise that
there will be a new edition some day for SysV Curses.

>	"Termcap and Terminfo" by John Strang, Tim O'Reilly and Linda Mui

But this one *doesn't* show how to use curses.

Other books I know of which have introductory stuff about curses
are:

	UNIX Programming on the 80286/80386
	by Alan Deikman
	ISBN: 0-934375-83-6

	Topics in C Programming
	Stephen G. Kochan & Patrick H. Wood
	ISBN: 0-672-46290-7

The first book is mixture of somewhat unrelated stuff and
often refers to XENIX and Microport SysV (in other words:
a little out of date). But the curses stuff is not so bad;
at least there's a non-trivial program that demonstrates use of
many features. You should consider to order this book with
the companion disk, if you want to save the time to re-type
all the examples. BTW: There's also an introductory chapter
on writing device drivers.

The second book is quite a good general introduction if you have
made first experiences with C and want to learn more about the 
standard library, UNIX system calls, and UNIX tools. (There's
also a chapter about "make" and a short review on debuggers.)
The only thing that is not so good with this book is that the
word "UNIX" should appear in its title :-), because it's not
general C topics, but much UNIX related stuff.

Finally what about TFM? Well, I may be known here for flaming
the manuals that are delivered with some flavours of UNIX, but
what I have from ISC here in the "Programmers Guide" is not bad
(IMHO it's an unchanged copy of the AT&T manual).
-- 
Martin Weitzel, email: martin@mwtech.UUCP, voice: 49-(0)6151-6 56 83