Curses

Ncurses is a programming library API for implementing text user interfaces. Currently, XINU's interface for output is limited to sequential lines of output using the TTY driver and serial driver. The addition of an ncurses library in XINU would allow for more advanced text based interfaces.

Why it is called curses

Ncurses is designed to be a terminal independent API for text based interfaces. This terminal independence requires a multi-layered internal implementation of the ncurses library. Adding the actual ncurses implementation into XINU would double the size of XINU boot image. Also, the standard ncurses implementation is highly complex, a contrast to XINU's clean code base. XINU only has one terminal so the additional complexity of terminal independence is unnecessary for XINU. Therefore, attempts are being made to implement a clean ncurses library for XINU.

Starting from the original curses library is fairly straight forward. However, original curses does not provide color, text formatting, or other "cool" features that would make a text based interface for XINU worthwhile. Instead, the ncurses API, which includes these additional features, must be implemented for XINU. The ncurses API is much more complex. For example, multiple functions add characters to the screen: addch, waddch, and mvaddch, mvwaddch. The main function is waddch, while the other three are macroed to move the cursor or specifing a specific window to which the character should be added. All this adds up to a snarly mess that can cause the implementor to curse when the ncurses implementation just won't work.

Resources

• Strang, John. Programming with curses. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 1986.
• Gookin, Dan. Programmer's Guide to nCurses. Indianapolis: Wiley, 2007.
• Announcing ncurses 5.6