Python and (n)curses

[Neil Cerutti]

On 2007-06-20, Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp at snipabacken.dyndns.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:51:09 -0700, peter <peter.mosley at talk21.com> wrote:
>>
>>> > For me, introducing similar commands in Python would be by far  the biggest single improvement that could be made to the language.
>>
>>> If it should be done, it should be done as a compatible subset of
>>> curses, IMHO. It has such a long history as the standard "GUI toolkit"
>>
>> But curses doesn't run under Windows - thats the whole point!
>
> I meant to say "as a compatible subset of the Python 'curses' module
> API".
>
> I don't know what's so difficult about porting curses. Maybe
> it's that the DOS console is too broken, or maybe too many
> Unixisms are exposed by the API (can you get a signal when the
> DOS console window is resized?).

I think it's just a ton of work that wouldn't benefit that many
people. If you're using curses on Windows, what are the chances
you end up needing some other part of cygwin for the same
program?

> (Alex Martelli simply wrote something like this in his Python
> book: "I hear about curses ports to Windows now and then, but
> I've never seen one that worked". Something like that.)

There's a curses emulator written for python called wcurses, that
might provide enough functionality to allow a Windows
implementation of your Python curses program.

It doesn't actually use the windows console, however.

You could write your own little console interface, tailored to
your needs, which is implemented using curses on Unix, and the
effbot's 'console' on Windows.

-- 
Neil Cerutti
Symphonies of the Romantic era were a lot longer in length.
--Music Lit Essay