Pure Python mini-DB and NCurses

[David Bolen]

ryanmorillo at hotmail.com (Ryan) writes:

> As for the ncurses I'm just trying to figure out why it would be used.
>  If anyone has a reason other than novilty I would appreciate it as I
> can't understand what Guido was thinking when he put it in.

I don't suppose you've only been working with computers since the
typical interface was graphical, have you?

Curses is a long time (of which ncurses was a more recent enhanced
version) API for handling text mode console-like output that wasn't
purely stream oriented.  That is, it permitted control of an
addressable text display (e.g., put text at position (1,1)) rather
than just writing lines of text one after the other.

It also supports tracking screen contents, so that you can do the
equivalent of pop-up menus, fill-in-forms, and so on, all on a textual
device.  Definitely not a novelty when that's your output device, although
certainly less common nowadays.

Before GUIs came along this was the normal mode of operation -
everything was textual, except for dedicated graphical
devices/terminals.  And it's still a very common operational mode
(particularly under Unix, and particular for administrative tasks).
Definitely not a novelty.

Think of it as the difference under Windows between running EDIT at
the MS-DOS prompt, and using notepad.  Both edit files, but EDIT has
to manage its "windows" as part of the console display, and not
graphically.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/