Re: LYNX-DEV UNIXish and DOSish software

[Jason F. McBrayer]

>>>>> "JED" == John E Davis <address@hidden> writes:

JED> On 22 Mar 1998 16:51:18 -0600, address@hidden
JED> (Jason F. McBrayer) said:

[Direct screen-writes are possible but bad under OS/2]

JED>    I think that this should be a trivial thing to add to slang.
JED> About all that would be required would be to substitute
JED> sldisply.c for slvideo.c and change constructs such as `#ifdef
JED> VMS' to `#if defined(VMS) || defined(__os2__)' and a few
JED> additional tweaks. If there is enough interest I can probably
JED> make the appropriate changes.  However, this is the first time
JED> that I have ever heard anyone mention this problem on OS/2.

Well, it's not a problem under a conventional OS/2 installation, where
one only runs text-mode applications in an OS/2 Window or an OS/2
Full-Screen session.  If you use XFree86 a lot, or have attached
serial devices, or run a BBS, or telnet into your machine often, etc,
then there will be problems.  On the other hand, no other solutions
are really perfect: with ncurses, for example, the user has to install
a terminfo database which currently is used only by Lynx and the
ncurses test programs :(

Probably the best thing would be to follow the model of ncurses +
optional terminfo + fallback to hardcoded terminal description (PC
ANSI.SYS).  But you'll really only hear complaints from XFree86 users,
so I wouldn't go too far out of your way changing things.  There are
probably more slrn users than XFree86 users on OS/2, anyway, so having
a flag day of any kind would be much more trouble than it's worth.

-- 
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jason F. McBrayer              address@hidden |
| The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill   |   
| forever.                   (R.W. Chambers _The King in Yellow_ |