I would like to wrap a short text in a Text Box in Ncurses, but somehow my text keeps going off screen. How can I wrap the text so it (automatically) goes to a new line when reaching the end of the screen on the right?
I tried playing with '\n' and setting limits but witout results. Any tips what I am doing wrong? See below code for what is going on.
Thanks from a beginner programmer.
#include <ncurses.h>
#include <string.h>
void text(WINDOW* textborder, int wymax, int wxmax, char text5[], int size)
{
for (int i=0;i<size;i++)
{
mvwaddch(textborder,2,i+i, text5[i]);
if (i==wxmax)
{
mvwaddch(textborder,2,i+i, '\n');
}
}
}
int main()
{
char text5[]={"Somebody is watching over us... controlling us. It's true, I tell you. It's true! We are merely sprites that dance at the beck and call of our button-pressing overlord. This is a video game. Don't you see? We are characters in a video game."};
int size;
size=strlen(text5);
int wymax; int wxmax;
initscr();
WINDOW* textborder=newwin(LINES/4, COLS, LINES-LINES/4, 0);
box(textborder,-1,-1);
getmaxyx(textborder, wymax,wxmax);
wxmax=wxmax-4;
text(textborder, wymax, wxmax, text5, size);
wgetch(textborder);
endwin();
return 0;
}
In theory the text should wrap itself. I think your issue may be coming from using mvwaddch, ch generally causes the text not to wrap. This may help Ncurses no-wrap mode when adding strings to window. Sorry I can't be more helpful :)
Applications that draw a box with a border in curses do this using two windows, one within the other. The outer box gets the border; the inner box gets the text. Text printed within the inner box does not affect the outer box.
For example, some of the demo/example programs in ncurses do this, e.g., test_addstr creates look (for the box) and show (for the text):
limit = LINES - 5;
if (level > 0) {
look = newwin(limit, COLS - (2 * (level - 1)), 0, level - 1);
work = newwin(limit - 2, COLS - (2 * level), 1, level);
show = newwin(4, COLS, limit + 1, 0);
box(look, 0, 0);
wnoutrefresh(look);
limit -= 2;
} else {
work = stdscr;
show = derwin(stdscr, 4, COLS, limit + 1, 0);
}
keypad(work, TRUE);
Related
I'm making an ASCII art game in c (windows), but for some reason when i play it is all flickering at apparently random intervals, and for most of the time i can't see anything. can anyone explain why or how to solve it?
this is my code:
const int WIDTH = 20, HEIGTH = 5;
const int AREA = (WIDTH) * HEIGTH;
const int gl = HEIGTH - 2; //Ground level
const float delta = 0.1f; //Frame rate
char scr[AREA]; //String for displaying stuff
char input;
int posx = 10, posy = gl - 1; //Player position
int vel = 0; //player velocity
while(1)
{
//TODO: player input
for(i = 0; i < AREA; i++) //Rendering part
{
if(i % WIDTH == 0 && i != 0)
{
scr[i] = '\n';
continue;
}
if(floor(i / WIDTH) >= gl) //i is on ground
{
scr[i] = '.';
continue;
}
scr[i] = ' ';
}
//Set player position
scr[posy * WIDTH + posx + 1] = '#';
scr[(posy + 1) * WIDTH + posx + 1] = '#';
system("cls");// Clear terminal
printf(scr);// Print screen
usleep(delta * 1000);//Sleep
}
output:
#
..........#........
...................►↓#
It works, but it flickers...
One possible reason for your problem is that there may be output waiting in the output buffer when you call your sleep function usleep. In that case, you should always flush all output before sleeping, by calling the function fflush( stdout );.
Also, using system("cls"); is highly inefficient. It is generally better to use the Console Functions API, or, if you are targetting platforms with Windows 10 or later, you can also use Console Virtual Terminal Sequences instead.
If you decide to use the Console Functions API, then the main functions that you will be needing in order to replace system("cls"); are GetStdHandle to obtain the output handle, and SetConsoleCursorPosition. That way, you won't have to clear the whole screen, but will only have to overwrite the parts of the screen that are changing. I also recommend that you replace printf with WriteConsole, otherwise you may run into buffering issues.
If this does not solve your flickering problem, then there also is the possibility of using double-buffering. Both the Console Functions API and Console Virtual Terminal Sequences support this.
When using the Console Functions API, you can use the function CreateConsoleScreenBuffer to create a new buffer to write to, without it being displayed immediately. This will allow you to first finish building the next screen, without any flickering occuring while doing so (because it is not being displayed yet). Once you have finished building the next screen, you can display it using the function SetConsoleActiveScreenBuffer.
Console Virtual Terminal Sequences offer similar functionality by supporting an alternate screen buffer.
Before I make one of these posts, I look around at around 5-10 other forums to see if my question has been answered.
There are a lot of websites that explain that my compiler doesn't have blinking enabled, and that I just need to download the package to enable it, or something to that affect
However, of all the ones that I have seen, none of them go into detail about where and how to acquire the package I need to allow blinking, or if they do then it isn't with my compiler.
So if someone could assist me, how do I enable blinking on Ubuntu with a function such as
attron(A_BLINK);
I'm aware that similarly phrased questions will get down-votes. I do not care, I just want to know how to fix my problem.
Any feedback would be really appreciated
-Edit
#include <string.h>
#include <ncurses.h>
int main(void)
{
char text[] = "Please Blink";
size_t len = strlen(text);
int i, row, col;
initscr();
getmaxyx(stdscr, row,col);
keypad(stdscr, TRUE);
noecho();
curs_set(0);
move((row / 2), (col / 2) - (len / 2));
attron(A_BLINK);
for(i = 0; i < len; ++i)
{
printw("%c", text[i]);
}
refresh();
getch();
attroff(A_BLINK);
endwin();
return 0;
}
-Ryan
ansi escape sequences
as an example of usage:
from the terminal type:
echo -e "\x1b[5;32;43m"
this results in a blinking green foreground over a yellow background
then type:
echo "test"
to display the word test as green letters over a yellow background
then, if the screen has not returned to normal operation, type:
echo -e "\1b[0m"
to reset the screen to normal
Note: the same ansi escape sequences can be output using the printf() function via:
printf( "%s\n", "\x1b[5;32;43m" );
and so on.
Blinking is a property of your terminal emulator. If your terminal does not support it, it won't happen.
FWIW, a plain xterm window does support blinking for me.
However, if you want the text to blink, you can manually make it happen by periodically overwriting the text with blanks. Something along the lines of:
int toggle = 0;
halfdelay(5);
do {
toggle = !toggle;
move((row / 2), (col / 2) - (len / 2));
printw("%*.*s", len, len, toggle ? text : "");
refresh();
} while (getch() == ERR);
nocbreak();
The halfdelay() call will cause getch() to return after 5/10ths of a second. If no key was hit within that time, ERR is returned. The nocbreak() call will disable halfdelay().
It doesn't print at coordinates y=10, x=20.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <curses.h>
int main()
{
initscr();
refresh();
WINDOW *win;
wmove(win, 10, 20);
refresh();
printf("hi\n");
return 0;
}
When I execute it like this...
./a.out > op_file
This is what is op_file
[?1049h[1;24r(B[m[4l[?7h[H[2J-1
hi
Can someone explain...??
You must use initscr() function to initialize the screen and endwin() at the end to close the window...
If you move(), you must use refresh() or the cursor won't move physically.
To move the cursor to a new position on a window, use the function int wmove(WINDOW *win, int y, int x)
wmove(win, y, x);
where (x, y) are the coordinates of the new position in the window. If the window has nlines lines and ncolumns columns, then
0 <= y < nlines
0 <= x < ncolumns
Refresh. The actual cursor motion is not shown on the screen untill you do a wrefresh(win).
move(y, x) is equivalent to the wmove(stdscr, y, x).`
The move() and wmove() functions move the cursor associated with the current or specified window to (y, x) relative to the window's origin. This function does not move the terminal's cursor until the next refresh operation.
To move the logical cursor in the user-defined window my_window to the coordinates y = 5, x = 10, use :
#include <stdio.h>
#include <curses.h>
int main(){
refresh();//First refresh
WINDOW *my_window;
int a = wmove(my_window, 5, 10);
refresh();////Second refresh
printf("%d\n",a);
printf("hi\n");
return 0;
}
The output
[?1049h[1;24r(B[m[4l[?7h[H[2J-1
hi
shows the printable characters written. If you look at the complete text, e.g., in a text-editor, there'll be ASCII escape characters before the [ and ( characters since that's part of the escape sequence.
Your example doesn't show cursor movement (aside from the home position which you'd see as ^[[H near the end) because there's no reason for the curses library to actually move the cursor. If you had asked it to read a character, e.g., using getch, it would have to stop and decide where the cursor should be — and your wmove would do that — except that win is not initialized. The simplest thing to do is use stdscr (which is initialized by initscr).
The program quits curses calls without doing an endwin (which leaves the terminal in raw mode). The data does get written to the screen with the refresh call. The data written with printf happens to come out in the right order, but that's only coincidental since it does not use the same output buffering as ncurses.
Both of the other answers contain similar errors.
This works.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <curses.h>
int main()
{
initscr();
refresh();
WINDOW *win;
win = stdscr;
wmove(win, 10, 10);
refresh();
printf("hi\n");
return 0;
}
Thanks to #interjay.
I'm working a simple candy crush game for my year 1 assignment.
I am at this stage where I need to show my self-made simple marker( *box made of '|' and '_'* ) on the center of the board ( board[5][5] ) once the program is executed.
Here is the current code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
//FUNCTION: Draw the Board
int drawBoard()
{
//Declare array size
int board[9][9];
//initialize variables
int rows, columns, randomNumber, flag;
//random number seed generator
srand(time(NULL));
for ( rows = 0 ; rows < 9 ; rows++ )
{
for ( columns = 0 ; columns < 9 ; columns++ )
{
flag = 0;
do
{
//generate random numbers from 2 - 8
randomNumber = rand() %7 + 2;
board[rows][columns] = randomNumber;
//Checks for 2 adjacent numbers.
if ( board[rows][columns] == board[rows - 1][columns] || board[rows][columns] == board[rows][columns - 1] )
{
flag = 0;
continue;
}
else
{
flag = 1;
printf( " %d ", board[rows][columns] );
}
} while ( flag == 0 );
}//end inner for-loop
printf("\n\n");
}//end outer for-loop
//call FUNCTION marker() to display marker around board[5][5]
marker( board[5][5] );
}//end FUNCTION drawBoard
//FUNCTION: Mark the surrounding of the number with "|" and "_" at board[5][5]
void marker( int a )
{
printf( " _ \n" );
printf( "|%c|\n", a );
printf( " _ \n" );
}
int main()
{
drawBoard();
}
At the end of function drawBoard(), I placed the code marker( board[5][5] ).
This should have printed the markers around the number printed at coordinate board[5][5]..but for some reason it displays right after the board has been printed.
So why doesn't it print at that coordinate although I specified it at board[5][5]?
What could be the problem here?
so in your marker function you need to pass the board and the coordinate you want to print at
void marker( int x, int y, int** board )
{
board[x][y-1]="_";
board[x-1][y]="|";
board[x+1][y]="|";
board[x][y+1]="_";
}
then after the call to marker(5,5,board), call drawboard again
my code's a bit off but that's the logic, except you need to check for the case that the marker is at the edge of the board
in other words, you need to keep board around, and any time you make a change to it, clear the screen and print the whole board out again.
There is no persistent drawing in the way that you are doing this. You are just printing straight to the shell/command prompt. The way that you trying to do things will not work. You can't edit something drawn to the prompt after you have drawn it, you need to basically clear the screen and then draw again but with your indicated maker.
I don't know if you are able to use libraries in your assignment, but a very good library that WILL let you do is ncurses
EDIT Full rewrite of answer
Drawing Things On Top of One Another In CMD
Alright, I had some downtime at work, so I wrote a project to do what you need and I'm going to post code and explain what it does and why you need it along the way.
First thin that you are going to need a basically a render buffer or a render context. Whenever you are programming in a graphics API such as OpenGL, you don't just render straight to the screen, you render each object that you have to a buffer that rasterizes your content and turns it into pixels. Once it's in that form, the API shoves the rendered picture onto the screen. We are going to take a similar approach where instead of drawing to a pixel buffer on the GPU, we are going to draw to a character buffer. Think about each character as a pixel on the screen.
Here is a pastebin of the complete source:
Complete Source of Project
RenderContext
Our class to do this will be the RenderContext class. It has fields to hold width and height as well as an array of chars and a special char that we fill our buffer with whenever we clear it.
This class simply holds an array and functions to let us render to it. It makes sure that when we draw to it, we are within bounds. It is possible for an object to try to draw outside of the clipping space (off screen). However, whatever is drawn there is discarded.
class RenderContext {
private:
int m_width, m_height; // Width and Height of this canvas
char* m_renderBuffer; // Array to hold "pixels" of canvas
char m_clearChar; // What to clear the array to
public:
RenderContext() : m_width(50), m_height(20), m_clearChar(' ') {
m_renderBuffer = new char[m_width * m_height];
}
RenderContext(int width, int height) : m_width(width), m_height(height), m_clearChar(' ') {
m_renderBuffer = new char[m_width * m_height];
}
~RenderContext();
char getContentAt(int x, int y);
void setContentAt(int x, int y, char val);
void setClearChar(char clearChar);
void render();
void clear();
};
The two most important functions of this class are setContentAt and render
setContentAt is what an object calls to fill in a "pixel" value. To make this a little more flexible, our class uses a pointer to an array of chars rather than a straight array (or even a two dimensional array). This lets us set the size of our canvas at runtime. Because of this, we access elements of this array with x + (y * m_width) which replaces a two dimensional dereference such as arr[i][j]
// Fill a specific "pixel" on the canvas
void RenderContext::setContentAt(int x, int y, char val) {
if (((0 <= x) && (x < m_width)) && ((0 <= y) && (y < m_height))) {
m_renderBuffer[(x + (y * m_width))] = val;
}
}
render is what actually draws to the prompt. All it does is iterate over all the "pixels" in it's buffer and place them on screen and then moves to the next line.
// Paint the canvas to the shell
void RenderContext::render() {
int row, column;
for (row = 0; row < m_height; row++) {
for (column = 0; column < m_width; column++) {
printf("%c", getContentAt(column, row));
}
printf("\n");
}
}
I_Drawable
Our next class is an Interface that lets us contract with objects that they can draw to our RenderContext. It is pure virtual because we don't want to actually be able to instantiate it, we only want to derive from it. It's only function is draw which accepts a RenderContext. Derived classes use this call to receive the RenderContext and then use RenderContext's setContentAt to put "pixels" into the buffer.
class I_Drawable {
public:
virtual void draw(RenderContext&) = 0;
};
GameBoard
The first class to implement the I_Drawable, thus being able to render to our RenderContext, is the GameBoard class. This is where a majority of the logic comes in. It has fields for width, height, and a integer array that holds the values of the elements on the board. It also has two other fields for spacing. Since when you draw your board using your code, you have spaces between each element. We don't need to incorporate this into the underlying structure of the board, we just need to use them when we draw.
class GameBoard : public I_Drawable {
private:
int m_width, m_height; // Width and height of the board
int m_verticalSpacing, m_horizontalSpacing; // Spaces between each element on the board
Marker m_marker; // The cursor that will draw on this board
int* m_board; // Array of elements on this board
void setAtPos(int x, int y, int val);
void generateBoard();
public:
GameBoard() : m_width(10), m_height(10), m_verticalSpacing(5), m_horizontalSpacing(3), m_marker(Marker()) {
m_board = new int[m_width * m_height];
generateBoard();
}
GameBoard(int width, int height) : m_width(width), m_height(height), m_verticalSpacing(5), m_horizontalSpacing(3), m_marker(Marker()) {
m_board = new int[m_width * m_height];
generateBoard();
}
~GameBoard();
int getAtPos(int x, int y);
void draw(RenderContext& renderTarget);
void handleInput(MoveDirection moveDirection);
int getWidth();
int getHeight();
};
It's key functions are generateBoard, handleInput, and the derived virtual function draw. However, do note that in its constructor it creates a new int array and gives it to its pointer. Then its destructor automatically removes the allocated memory whenever the board goes away.
generateBoard is what we use to actual create the board and fill it with numbers. It will iterate over each location on the board. Each time, it will look at the elements directly to the left and above and store them. Then it will generate a random number until the number it generates does not match either of the stored elements, then it stores the number in the array. I rewrote this to get rid of the flag usage. This function gets called during the construction of the class.
// Actually create the board
void GameBoard::generateBoard() {
int row, column, randomNumber, valToLeft, valToTop;
// Iterate over all rows and columns
for (row = 0; row < m_height; row++) {
for (column = 0; column < m_width; column++) {
// Get the previous elements
valToLeft = getAtPos(column - 1, row);
valToTop = getAtPos(column, row - 1);
// Generate random numbers until we have one
// that is not the same as an adjacent element
do {
randomNumber = (2 + (rand() % 7));
} while ((valToLeft == randomNumber) || (valToTop == randomNumber));
setAtPos(column, row, randomNumber);
}
}
}
handleInput is what deals with moving the cursor around on the board. It's basically a freebie and your next step after getting the cursor to draw over the board. I needed a way to test the drawing. It accepts an enumeration that we switch on to know where to move our cursor to next. If you maybe wanted to have your cursor wrap around the board whenever you reach an edge, you would want to do that here.
void GameBoard::handleInput(MoveDirection moveDirection) {
switch (moveDirection) {
case MD_UP:
if (m_marker.getYPos() > 0)
m_marker.setYPos(m_marker.getYPos() - 1);
break;
case MD_DOWN:
if (m_marker.getYPos() < m_height - 1)
m_marker.setYPos(m_marker.getYPos() + 1);
break;
case MD_LEFT:
if (m_marker.getXPos() > 0)
m_marker.setXPos(m_marker.getXPos() - 1);
break;
case MD_RIGHT:
if (m_marker.getXPos() < m_width - 1)
m_marker.setXPos(m_marker.getXPos() + 1);
break;
}
}
draw is very important because it's what gets the numbers into the RenderContext. To summarize, it iterates over every element on the board, and draws in the correct location on the canvas placing an element under the correct "pixel". This is where we incorporate the spacing. Also, take care and note that we render the cursor in this function.
It's a matter of choice, but you can either store a marker outside of the GameBoard class and render it yourself in the main loop (this would be a good choice because it loosens the coupling between the GameBoard class and the Marker class. However, since they are fairly coupled, I chose to let GameBoard render it. If we used a scene graph, as we probably would with a more complex scene/game, the Marker would probably be a child node of the GameBoard so it would be similar to this implementation but still more generic by not storing an explicit Marker in the GameBoard class.
// Function to draw to the canvas
void GameBoard::draw(RenderContext& renderTarget) {
int row, column;
char buffer[8];
// Iterate over every element
for (row = 0; row < m_height; row++) {
for (column = 0; column < m_width; column++) {
// Convert the integer to a char
sprintf(buffer, "%d", getAtPos(column, row));
// Set the canvas "pixel" to the char at the
// desired position including the padding
renderTarget.setContentAt(
((column * m_verticalSpacing) + 1),
((row * m_horizontalSpacing) + 1),
buffer[0]);
}
}
// Draw the marker
m_marker.draw(renderTarget);
}
Marker
Speaking of the Marker class, let's look at that now. The Marker class is actually very similar to the GameBoard class. However, it lacks a lot of the logic that GameBoard has since it doesn't need to worry about a bunch of elements on the board. The important thing is the draw function.
class Marker : public I_Drawable {
private:
int m_xPos, m_yPos; // Position of cursor
public:
Marker() : m_xPos(0), m_yPos(0) {
}
Marker(int xPos, int yPos) : m_xPos(xPos), m_yPos(yPos) {
}
void draw(RenderContext& renderTarget);
int getXPos();
int getYPos();
void setXPos(int xPos);
void setYPos(int yPos);
};
draw simply puts four symbols onto the RenderContext to outline the selected element on the board. Take note that Marker has no clue about the GameBoard class. It has no reference to it, it doesn't know how large it is, or what elements it holds. You should note though, that I got lazy and didn't take out the hard coded offsets that sort of depend on the padding that the GameBoard has. You should implement a better solution to this because if you change the padding in the GameBoard class, your cursor will be off.
Besides that, whenever the symbols get drawn, they overwrite whatever is in the ContextBuffer. This is important because the main point of your question was how to draw the cursor on top of the GameBoard. This also goes to the importance of draw order. Let's say that whenever we draw our GameBoard, we drew a '=' between each element. If we drew the cursor first and then the board, the GameBoard would draw over the cursor making it invisible.
If this were a more complex scene, we might have to do something fancy like use a depth buffer that would record the z-index of an element. Then whenever we drew, we would check and see if the z-index of the new element was closer or further away than whatever was already in the RenderContext's buffer. Depending on that, we might skip drawing the "pixel" altogether.
We don't though, so take care to order your draw calls!
// Draw the cursor to the canvas
void Marker::draw(RenderContext& renderTarget) {
// Adjust marker by board spacing
// (This is kind of a hack and should be changed)
int tmpX, tmpY;
tmpX = ((m_xPos * 5) + 1);
tmpY = ((m_yPos * 3) + 1);
// Set surrounding elements
renderTarget.setContentAt(tmpX - 0, tmpY - 1, '-');
renderTarget.setContentAt(tmpX - 1, tmpY - 0, '|');
renderTarget.setContentAt(tmpX - 0, tmpY + 1, '-');
renderTarget.setContentAt(tmpX + 1, tmpY - 0, '|');
}
CmdPromptHelper
The last class that I'm going to talk about is the CmdPromptHelper. You don't have anything like this in your original question. However, you will need to worry about it soon. This class is also only useful on Windows so if you are on linux/unix, you will need to worry about dealing with drawing to the shell yourself.
class CmdPromptHelper {
private:
DWORD inMode; // Attributes of std::in before we change them
DWORD outMode; // Attributes of std::out before we change them
HANDLE hstdin; // Handle to std::in
HANDLE hstdout; // Handle to std::out
public:
CmdPromptHelper();
void reset();
WORD getKeyPress();
void clearScreen();
};
Each one of the functions is important. The constructor gets handles to the std::in and std::out of the current command prompt. The getKeyPress function returns what key the user presses down (key-up events are ignored). And the clearScreen function clears the prompt (not really, it actually moves whatever is already in the prompt up).
getKeyPress just makes sure you have a handle and then reads what has been typed into the console. It makes sure that whatever it is, it is a key and that it is being pressed down. Then it returns the key code as a Windows specific enum usually prefaced by VK_.
// See what key is pressed by the user and return it
WORD CmdPromptHelper::getKeyPress() {
if (hstdin != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
DWORD count;
INPUT_RECORD inrec;
// Get Key Press
ReadConsoleInput(hstdin, &inrec, 1, &count);
// Return key only if it is key down
if (inrec.Event.KeyEvent.bKeyDown) {
return inrec.Event.KeyEvent.wVirtualKeyCode;
} else {
return 0;
}
// Flush input
FlushConsoleInputBuffer(hstdin);
} else {
return 0;
}
}
clearScreen is a little deceiving. You would think that it clears out the text in the prompt. As far as I know, it doesn't. I'm pretty sure it actually shifts all the content up and then writes a ton of characters to the prompt to make it look like the screen was cleared.
An important concept that this function brings up though is the idea of buffered rendering. Again, if this were a more robust system, we would want to implement the concept of double buffering which means rendering to an invisible buffer and waiting until all drawing is finished and then swap the invisible buffer with the visible one. This makes for a much cleaner view of the render because we don't see things while they are still getting drawn. The way we do things here, we see the rendering process happen right in front of us. It's not a major concern, it just looks ugly sometimes.
// Flood the console with empty space so that we can
// simulate single buffering (I have no idea how to double buffer this)
void CmdPromptHelper::clearScreen() {
if (hstdout != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
CONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO csbi;
DWORD cellCount; // How many cells to paint
DWORD count; // How many we painted
COORD homeCoord = {0, 0}; // Where to put the cursor to clear
// Get console info
if (!GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo(hstdout, &csbi)) {
return;
}
// Get cell count
cellCount = csbi.dwSize.X * csbi.dwSize.Y;
// Fill the screen with spaces
FillConsoleOutputCharacter(
hstdout,
(TCHAR) ' ',
cellCount,
homeCoord,
&count
);
// Set cursor position
SetConsoleCursorPosition(hstdout, homeCoord);
}
}
main
The very last thing that you need to worry about is how to use all these things. That's where main comes in. You need a game loop. Game loops are probably the most important thing in any game. Any game that you look at will have a game loop.
The idea is:
Show something on screen
Read input
Handle the input
GOTO 1
This program is no different. The first thing it does is create a GameBoard and a RenderContext. It also makes a CmdPromptHelper which lets of interface with the command prompt. After that, it starts the loop and lets the loop continue until we hit the exit condition (for us that's pressing escape). We could have a separate class or function do dispatch input, but since we just dispatch the input to another input handler, I kept it in the main loop. After you get the input, you send if off to the GameBoard which alters itself accordingly. The next step is to clear the RenderContext and the screen/prompt. Then rerun the loop if escape wasn't pressed.
int main() {
WORD key;
GameBoard gb(5, 5);
RenderContext rc(25, 15);
CmdPromptHelper cph;
do {
gb.draw(rc);
rc.render();
key = cph.getKeyPress();
switch (key) {
case VK_UP:
gb.handleInput(MD_UP);
break;
case VK_DOWN:
gb.handleInput(MD_DOWN);
break;
case VK_LEFT:
gb.handleInput(MD_LEFT);
break;
case VK_RIGHT:
gb.handleInput(MD_RIGHT);
break;
}
rc.clear();
cph.clearScreen();
} while (key != VK_ESCAPE);
}
After you have taken into consideration all of these things, you understand why and where you need to be drawing your cursor. It's not a matter of calling a function after another, you need to composite your draws. You can't just draw the GameBoard and then draw the Marker. At least not with the command prompt. I hope this helps. It definitely alleviated the down time at work.
I've just finished working through the code of a CLI program, converting it into a TUI program using ncurses.
It tests the user on a collection of questions and answers in a flash card-like way.
All went relatively smoothly except that I have replaced many printf() calls with a popupinfo(int colour,char * title, char * body) function to pop up a window.
This function uses these functions:
int textwidth (char * text);//returns the width of a given string (which may include newlines) in chars when displayed without wrapping (for purposes of determining optimum window width)
int textheight (char * text, int width);//returns the height of a given string (which may include newlines) in lines when displayed wrapped to the given width (for purposes of determining optimum window width)
to calculate the size of the window before using wprintw() to print to that window.
The problem I have is that when the length of a line other than the last line is exactly equal to the window width (or a multiple of the window width), one or more lines of text will be omitted from the window.
For example:
Answer:
Foobarbaz.
will print correctly, but in:
Answer:
Foo.
The 'Foo.' is not printed.
I believe this is because the wprintw() function moves the cursor to a new line after printing (window_width) chars, but then encounters the newline character that was at the end of the line it just printed as well.
Does anyone know of a way (short of writing an entire function to handle output myself) to stop this happening?
Useful details:
I'm replacing:
printf("\nSorry, the correct answer is:\n\n\t%s\n\n",currententry->answer);
with:
sprintf(passingstring,"The correct answer is:\n\n%s",currententry->answer);
popupinfo(3,"Sorry!",passingstring);
popupinfo is defined as:
void popupinfo(int colour,char * title,char * message)//pops up a window with the given colour, title and text
{
WINDOW * wbpopup = NULL, * wpopup = NULL;
PANEL * ppopup = NULL;
int width, height;
width=textwidth(message);
getmaxyx(stdscr,nlines,ncols);
if (width>ncols-16)width=ncols-16;
height=textheight(message,width)+4;
width+=8;
if (!(wbpopup = newwin(height,width,(nlines-height)/2,(ncols-width)/2))) outofmemory();
ppopup = new_panel(wbpopup);
wattrset(wbpopup,COLOR_PAIR(colour));
werase(wbpopup);
wbkgd(wbpopup,COLOR_PAIR(colour));
box(wbpopup,0,0);
windowtitle(wbpopup,title);
wpopup = innerwindow(wbpopup);
wprintw(wpopup,message);
update_panels();
doupdate();
wgetch(wpopup);
delwin(wpopup);
del_panel(ppopup);
delwin(wbpopup);
update_panels();
doupdate();
}
Also useful:
int textwidth (char * text)//returns the width of a given string (which may include newlines) in chars when displayed without wrapping (for purposes of determining optimum window width)
{
int i=0,j=0,k=0;
while (text[i]!='\0')
{
if (text[i]=='\n')
{
k=j>k?j:k;
j=0;
}
else j++;
i++;
}
k=j>k?j:k;
return k;
}
and
int textheight (char * text, int width)//returns the height of a given string (which may include newlines) in lines when displayed wrapped to the given width (for purposes of determining optimum window width)
{
int i=0,j=0,k=1;
while (text[i]!='\0')
{
if (text[i]=='\n')
{
k++;
j=0;
}
else j++;
if (j>width)
{
k++;
j=1;
}
i++;
}
return k;
}
Other functions:
WINDOW * innerwindow(WINDOW * outerwindow);//creates an area within another window for purposes of displaying text with a margin
void windowtitle(WINDOW * window, char * title);//writes the given string to the given window (top centre)
For anything further, see full source for the CLI and ncurses versions, which can be found at http://github.com/megamasha
You are absolutely right when you say:
I believe this is because the wprintw() function moves the cursor to a
new line after printing (window_width) chars, but then encounters the
newline character that was at the end of the line it just printed as
well.
Regarding your question
Does anyone know of a way (short of writing an entire function to
handle output myself) to stop this happening?
- there is no such way, because what you observe is how line wrapping works in ncurses.
What you could do is making the popup window one character wider, thus avoiding the wrapping that is due to reaching the width of the window, for example by changing the line width+=8; to width+=8+1; in popupinfo.