HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
What Is the CURSES Library? The CURSES library contains a set of C/iX library functions that provides screen management services consisting 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. CURSES 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. Refer to Chapter 4 for a complete description of the routines available in the CURSES package.