HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Chapter 4 CURSES
The CURSES screen management package consists of routines and macros for
creating and modifying input and output to a terminal screen. CURSES
contains routines for creating windows, highlighting text, writing to the
screen, reading from user input, and moving the cursor.
The CURSES package is designed to optimize screen update activities. For
example, when updating the screen, CURSES minimizes the number of
characters sent to the terminal to move and update the screen.
CURSES is a terminal-independent package, providing a common user
interface to a variety of terminal types. Its portability is facilitated
by the TERMINFO database, which contains a compiled definition of each
terminal type. By referring to the database information, CURSES gains
access to low-level details about individual terminals.
CURSES tailors its activities to the terminal type specified by the TERM
environment variable. The TERM environment variable may be set in the
MPE/iX shell by entering:
export TERM=terminal_name
Hewlett-Packard systems default to the hp2392a terminal name.