ncursesw

This is a fat wrapper around the NCurses TUI library, it's purpose is too make the native library functionally safe to use, however please be aware that there are a number of functions within the native library that under certain circumstances can cause undefined behaviour, these functions have been implemented and can be called but have been marked as deprecated with appropriate notes.

There are actually three layers of NCurses functions exposed within this library, the raw extern "C" functions that are generated with bindgen which are available in ncursesw::shims::bindings.

A layer above this which are mainly unsafe but protect the calling code to a certain degree with assertions (some functions will also have a slight rust wrapping (for example functions returning a raw pointer) but are on the whole left as per the bindgen layer), these can be found in ncursesw::shims::{ncurses, npanels, nmouse, nmenu, nform} and you can consider this layer as the equivalent of a -sys crate for the NCurses library.

Last but not least there are the safe (within the limits of NCurses itself) functions in ncursesw and ncursesw::{panels, mouse, menu, form} which retain there original NCurses names but have been rustified.

There is a companion crate ncursesw-win which acts as a wrapper around this crate and encapsulates the raw pointers that NCurses uses and provides a higher level of functionality.

Requirements

At the moment this crate has only been tested on 64-bit Linux (Linux Mint 19.1) so should work on Debian 64-bit flavors of Linux but this is as yet unproven.

Recomendations and Native Library Support

I whould recommend using version 0.6 and above of this crate as the crates API has pretty much stabilized at this point. In addition from 0.6.2 the native NCurses library (currently v6.3 patch 20211021) is locally compiled and statically linked into this crate so there is no dependency on the version of NCurses (ABI or otherwise) that is currently install via the distribution/operating system.

Inclusion

[dependencies]
ncursesw = "0.6"

Or to use the latest git version

[dependencies]
ncursesw = { git = "https://github.com/narfit66/ncursesw-rs" }

Building

As noted above this crate has only been tested on Debian based x86_64 Linux.

The NCurses library is locally compiled and statically linked when this crate is built with all features required (wide character and extended color support) along with the menu, form and panels libraries.

The compiled crate will be built in the target directory.

cargo build

Features

By default this crate will be compiled so that the following NCurses functions getch(), mvgetch(), mvwgetch(), wgetch(), get_wch(), mvget_wch(), mvwget_wch() and wget_wch() will pass a KEY_RESIZE on event of the terminal being resized back to the client code as KeyBinding::ResizeEvent. The follwing setting in the client code crates Cargo.toml will cause this crate to be compiled so that they will be passed back as NCurseswError::KeyResize error types instead.

[features]
key_resize_as_error = ["ncursesw/key_resize_as_error"]

How to Use

extern crate ncursesw;

use ncursesw::*;

This crate follows the basic principles that are used when using NCurses with C, it supports the standard ascii functions (the add type functions seem to support unicode characters out of the box in NCurses v6.1.20180127 if not earlier), ascii characters with rendition (chtype), wide characters (wchar_t/wint_t) and complex characters with rendition (cchar_t).

Color pairs and attributes (rendition) are dealt with in two modules. The normal module deals with the standard ansi color pairs defined internally within NCurses as short_t/i16 and the extend module is for extended color pairs that are defined internally within NCurses as i32. Because the normal color pairs are actually an attribute within NCurses both modules also implement there own Attribute and Attributes types.

To use attributes and color pairs

use ncursesw::normal::*; // for 'ansi' color pairs and attributes...
use ncursesw::extend::*; // or for 'extended' color pairs and attributes.

To use the panels functions

use ncursesw::panels::*;

To use the mouse functions

use ncursesw::mouse::*;

To use the menu functions

use ncursesw::menu::*;

To use the form functions

use ncursesw::form::*;

To use wide (UTF-8) characters setlocale() needs to be called before the NCurses library is initialised, in the examples the gettext-rs crate has been used for this purpose.

All features are supported as of NCurses v6.1 including ansi 8-bit (normal) colors and color pairs, extended colors and color pairs, characters and strings (with attribute/color rendition), wide (UTF-8) characters and strings, complex characters and strings, soft labels, ripoff lines, panels, mouse, menus, forms and screen functions. I would suggest examining NCurses maintainer Thomas E. Dickey online documentation and also the panels, mouse, menu, form and screen documentation. If you get the chance have a read of the book Dan Gookin's Guide to NCurses Programming by well i guessing here but i'm thinking it's Dan Gookin, this is a good primer to gain an understanding in how to use this library. In both cases you will need a basic knowlege of 'C'.

Alternativly have a look at the crate ncursesw-win which wraps this crate with the express purpose of not exposing the NCurses library raw pointers and encapsulating them in formalised structures.

Documentation

Documentation for this crate can be found here.

License

Licensed under the MIT license, see LICENSE