Programming

Hi guys,
I'm trying to make my program to print out tables usings line-drawing character (alternate char. set) with Curses Library. However, it always prints out control characters (^@) instead of the correct ones.

code example:
mvwaddch(my_window, 23, 12, ACS_RTEE);

appreciate your help, i'm new here

Well this was a new one on me. I didn't know that curses had this capability. But I've been looking over the documentation and I'll make a couple of guesses.

First, are you sure that your terminal can draw lines this way? Almost no one actually uses a true vt-100. Instead you may have a terminal that is emulating a vt-100 or you may be using a program like xterm that emulates a vt-100. xterm can only do what the font can do. My xterm cannot draw lines. But I'm not going to try any different fonts to see what I can do. So the first thing I would try is to write a non-curses program that sends the correct character string to the terminal and verify that it is possible.

If the terminal can really draw lines, the next thing to worry about is the terminfo entry. You may need to write a new one. I have seen several cases where complex curses stuff did not work because the OS came with a poor terminfo entry. I think that the manufacters simply ensure that the terminfo entry can run vi. They can't be testing it much beyond that from what I've seen.

actually, I've looked over all possiblities. And I'm sure that my can display line-drawing chars. If you want, you could try this on your terminal:
"tput smacs", type some stuff and "tput rmacs". You'll see what's going on.

i have a binary in my directory and it also uses curses (ncurses, perhaps), guess what, it display all the line-drawing chars correctly, one by one. But I couldn't contact the author. so bad...
thanks for your help

I just tried, no dice. What OS are you using? What terminal? It doesn't work for me on either SunOS nor HP-UX. I am using an NCD xterminal and my xterms are using:
-bitstream-terminal-medium-r-normal--18-140-100-100-c-110-iso8859-1 for the font.

i'm using sun, and gnome-terminal. did you try to man?

This brings back faint memories. Here is what you might call 'line-drawing-characters' (seriously):

+-------------------+
| 1. Make backup |
| 2. Scripsit |
| 3. Profile-16 |
| |
+-------------------+

This was as far as my old Multitech terminals would go.

You probably need to get a 'real' terminal and see what happens, and to what extent the line-drawing capabilities are supported.
There must be piles of VT-52's in the attics of the world (I have one, but no keyboard!).

Then, you must look for a way to unite all those soft-terms. I have 4 PC's and 1 workstation, and the terminals are called 'ansi', 'vt-100', 'cons25', 'dtterm', ... all trying to do the same thing (emulate a DEC VT-100).
You must probably settle on the least common denominator, or do as suggested, write a new termcap entry, which must be part of your application. BEWARE: Your termcap entry can quickly become two, three, etc.

Atle