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diff --git a/doc/html/Ada95.html b/doc/html/Ada95.html new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..e744da7278c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/html/Ada95.html @@ -0,0 +1,184 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<!-- + $Id: Ada95.html,v 1.8 2010/12/04 16:42:54 tom Exp $ + **************************************************************************** + * Copyright (c) 1998-2004,2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc. * + * * + * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a * + * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the * + * "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including * + * without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, * + * distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell * + * copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is * + * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: * + * * + * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included * + * in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. * + * * + * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS * + * OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF * + * MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. * + * IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, * + * DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR * + * OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR * + * THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. * + * * + * Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright * + * holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the * + * sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written * + * authorization. * + **************************************************************************** +--> +<HTML> +<HEAD> +<TITLE>Ada95 Binding for ncurses</Title> +<link rev=made href="mailto:bug-ncurses@gnu.org"> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> +</HEAD> +<BODY> +<H1>Ada95 Binding for ncurses</H1> +by Jürgen Pfeifer. + +<HR SIZE=3 NOSHADE> +<H2>General Remarks</H2> +<UL> +<LI>This document describes Version 01.00 of the binding.</LI> +<LI>The functionality is modeled to be compatible with the ncurses +package, a clone of the SVr4 curses model.<BR> +I did the development on an Intel box running the latest stable release of +<A HREF="http://www.linux.org">Linux</A>, ncurses and the most recent released +<A HREF="http://www.gnat.com">GNU Ada Translator</A> +gnat versions. For any older versions of ncurses and gnat +it is not guaranteed to work.</LI> +<LI>You must have the m4 macroprocessor to build this package. +If you don't have this program, you can get the FSF version +<A HREF="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/">here</A>.</LI> +<LI>Ada programs are supposed to be readable. One of my +favorite methods to make code readable is to use expressive +names for the identifiers. You can find a list of a mapping +of the cryptic curses names to the Ada names in this <A HREF="ada/table.html">table</A>.</LI> +<LI>This is not a typical one-to-one interface mapping. It is +close to one-to-one on the functional level. Each (n)curses function +has it's counterpart with a more or less similar formal parameter list +in the binding. It is not one-to-one with respect to the datatypes. +I tried to make records out of the flat chtype and similar structures, +so you don't have to do bit operations to mark an attributed character +as bold. Just make the boolean member <STRONG>bold</STRONG> of the record +true. The binding also hides the structures like WINDOW, PANEL, MENU, FORM +etc. ! It's a pure functional API.</LI> +<LI>I try to do as much error checking as possible and feasible +in the binding. I will raise an Ada exception when something +went wrong in the low-level curses. This has the effect that - at least +first time in my life - (n)curses programs have now a very rigid error +checking, but - thanks to Ada - you don't have to code the orgiastic +error checking style of C.</LI> +<LI>Support for wide characters is currently not in the binding, as it +is not really in ncurses at this point in time.</LI> +</UL> + +<H2>Limitations</H2> +<UL> +<LI>I provide no SCREEN datatype and functions to set a new screen. +If you need this (mostly for debugging I guess), write a small +C routine doing all this and import it into your Ada program.</LI> +<LI>I provide no functions to switch on/off curses tracing options. +Same suggestion as above.</LI> +<LI>Although Ada95 is an OO Language, this binding doesn't provide +an OO abstraction of the (n)curses functionality. As mentioned above +it's a thin binding for the (n)curses functions. But without any +doubt it would be nice to build on top of this an OO abstraction +of (n)curses functionality.<BR> +The only exception is the method how fieldtypes are represented in +this Binding. We provide an abstract tagged type Field_Type from +which the various fieldtypes are derived.</LI> +<LI>I currently do not support the link_fieldtype functionality of the +forms subsystem.</LI> +<LI>The *_IO packages are currently output only.</LI> +</UL> + +<H2>Hierarchy of packages</H2> +<UL> +<LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface__ads.htm">Terminal_Interface</A> + <UL><LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses__ads.htm">Curses</A> + <UL><LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-mouse__ads.htm">Mouse</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-panels__ads.htm">Panels</A> + <UL><LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-panels-user_data__ads.htm">User_Data</A> + </UL> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-menus__ads.htm">Menus</A> + <UL><LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-menus-menu_user_data__ads.htm">Menu_User_Data</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-menus-item_user_data__ads.htm">Item_User_Data</A> + </UL> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms__ads.htm">Forms</A> + <UL><LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-form_user_data__ads.htm">Form_User_Data</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_user_data__ads.htm">Field_User_Data</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types__ads.htm">Field_Types</A> + <UL><LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-alpha__ads.htm">Alpha</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-alphanumeric__ads.htm">AlphaNumeric</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-intfield__ads.htm">IntField</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-numeric__ads.htm">Numeric</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-regexp__ads.htm">RegExp</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-ipv4_address__ads.htm">IPV4_Address</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-enumeration__ads.htm">Enumeration</A> + <UL><LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-enumeration-ada__ads.htm">Ada</A> + </UL> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-user__ads.htm">User</A> + <UL><LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-forms-field_types-user-choice__ads.htm">Choice</A> + </UL> + </UL> + </UL> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io__ads.htm">Text_IO</A> + <UL><LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-integer_io__ads.htm">Integer_IO</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-float_io__ads.htm">Float_IO</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-fixed_io__ads.htm">Fixed_IO</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-decimal_io__ads.htm">Decimal_IO</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-modular_io__ads.htm">Modular_IO</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-enumeration_io__ads.htm">Enumeration_IO</A> + <LI><A HREF="ada/terminal_interface-curses-text_io-complex_io__ads.htm">Complex_IO</A> + </UL> + </UL> + </UL> +</UL> +If you want to navigate through the html pages of the package specs, click <A HREF="ada/index.htm">here</A>. +<H2>Implementation Details</H2> +<H4>Behind the abstraction</H4> +All the new types like <STRONG>Window</STRONG>, <STRONG>Panel</STRONG>, +<STRONG>Menu</STRONG>, <STRONG>Form</STRONG> etc. are just +opaque representations of the pointers to the corresponding +low level (n)curses structures like +<STRONG>WINDOW *</STRONG>, <STRONG>PANEL *</STRONG>, +<STRONG>MENU *</STRONG> or <STRONG>FORM *</STRONG>. +So you can safely pass them to C routines that expect a pointer +to one of those structures. +<H4>Extended ripoffline() usage</H4> +The official documentation of (n)curses says, that the line parameter +determines only whether or not exactly <STRONG>one</STRONG> line is +stolen from the top or bottom of the screen. So essentially only the +sign of the parameter is evaluated. ncurses has internally implemented +it in a way, that uses the line parameter also to control the amount of +lines to steal. This mechanism is used in the <STRONG>Rip_Off_Lines</STRONG> +routine of the binding. +<H4><A NAME="userpointer">How user defined field types work</A></H4> +TBD +<H4>Enumeration fields handling</H4> +The (n)curses documentation says, that the String arrays to be passed to +an TYPE_ENUM fieldtype must not be automatic variables. This is not true +in this binding, because it is internally arranged to safely copy these +values. +<H4><A NAME="compiler">Using other Ada compilers</A></H4> +This should basically not be a problem. +<H4>Port to other curses implementations</H4> +Basically it should not be too hard to make all this run on a regular SVr4 +implementation of curses. The problems are probably these:<BR> +<UL> +<LI>ncurses has some additional features which are presented in this binding. You +have two choices to deal with this: +<UL> +<LI>Emulate the feature in this binding</LI> +<LI>Raise an exception for non implemented features</LI> +</UL> +Most likely you will follow a mixed approach. Some features are easy to simulate, +others will be hard if not impossible.</LI> +</UL> +I'm quite sure I forgot something. +</BODY> +</HTML> |