[Coco] curses update

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 11:04 AM, richec <rcrislip at neo.rr.com> wrote:
> On Monday 16 November 2009 10:29:20 Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:02 AM, richec <rcrislip at neo.rr.com> wrote:
>> > On Monday 16 November 2009 09:45:34 Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>> >> >From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ncurses
>> >>
>> >> ncurses is a programming library providing an API, allowing the
>> >> programmer to write text user interfaces in a terminal-independent
>> >> manner. It's a toolkit for developing "GUI-like" apps which run under
>> >> a terminal emulator. It also optimizes screen changes, in order to
>> >> reduce the latency experienced when using remote shells.
>> >>
>> >> On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 9:04 AM, richec <rcrislip at neo.rr.com> wrote:
>> >> > < S N I P !  8-) >
>> >> >
>> >> > Hi Willard,
>> >> >
>> >> > Forgive my ignorance, are you working on a untility called curses or a
>> >> > game? TIA. I am asking because I am trying to figure out how to
>> >> > classify this thread in my archives.
>> >> >
>> >> > --
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>> >>
>> >> --
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>> >
>> > Thanks Aaron,
>> >
>> > I have a much better idea of where to file this discussion now. My
>> > Programming experiences have been limited to CoCo BASIC, IBM mainframe
>> > Assembler, COBOL, FORTRAN, and a few other languages that are not in much
>> > use today <sigh>. Although I do have some very limited exposure to C++...
>> > I was teaching it 8-O. I am NOT a programmer however, which is why I am
>> > not familiar with this tool.
>>
>> Even as a "non programer" these days, the work to port curses is great
>> news because a huge amount of software which is freely available in
>> source form uses this library for it's screen output.  This is a big
>> step in opening the door to porting that software to os9.  I haven't
>> had time to play with Mr. Goosey's code yet, but I am very excited to
>> hear about the progress and plan to start working with it soon.
>>
>> -Aaron
>>
>> > Richard
>> >
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>>
>> --
>> Coco mailing list
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>>
> Well, all I have to say is it is very cool to see you, Boisy, Roger, Willard,
> and I just know I am leaving a whole host of others out, continuing to
> develope software on a system that by all rights rights should have been put
> out to pasture with the B-52... Oh Wait! people are still using and
> developing for that too 8-)!
>

As I delve deeper into OS-9, I am more and more impressed.  I just
cannot believe what a huge step backwards MSDOS was, even on machines
with 10 times the ram.

I never got to use OS-9 as a kid, we didn't even have a disk drive for
our CoCo despite my many requests.  By the time I got my hands on a
machine with disks, it was a DOS machine and I never realized till
just lately how advanced OS-9 was in comparison.  I remember reading
Rainbow articles as a kid about OS9 (used to read it cover to cover)
but I never understood what they were talking about.

It is truly a shame that something like OS-9 existed yet the PC world
mostly standardized on such an inferior system.  I can only imagine
the frustration people who knew OS-9 back then must have felt watching
this happen.

In my opinion, rather than being put out to pasture, systems like this
should be studied by students of software design.  Sure, the system
isn't "useful" for general purpose computing by today's standards, but
as an example of what can be done with well written software, I think
it could be an awesome teaching tool.

The basic concepts used in OS-9 are still present in modern systems,
and often are not implemented as well.  You can't really study a
system like Windows, since the source is closed and it's a massive
amount of code.  Linux is better and easily obtained, but still far
too large to become intimately familiar with just for the sake of
learning.  OS-9 provides examples of many important concepts, but it's
still easy to find, read and understand any given part of it without
too much effort.

I recently purchased Lion's famous commentary on the original Unix
source code in hopes of learning more about some of the same things
I'm now learning from OS-9.  I think the OS-9 source and documentation
that can be found on the maltedmedia site provide a better learning
environment than even this "classic".

Just my $0.02 on this outdated machine :)
-Aaron