using ncursesw

[Marcus Brinkmann]

Hi,

I am currently writing the console for the Hurd, which is using UCS-4
internally and has a server-client design, so that you can attach and
detach from the actual console server using display clients.

One such client is written using ncursesw, making it possible to attach
to the local console from a remote terminal.  I have a couple of
questions:

* What is the quickest way to do scrolling?  My client-server
communication is asynchronous, however, I can do an optimization because
I know how many lines have scrolled off since the last update.  What I
am doing currently is that I just use

idlok (stdscr, TRUE);
scrlok (stdscr, TRUE);
scrl (number_of_lines);
idlok (stdscr, FALSE);
scrlok (stdsrc, FALSE);

and then I add the new content at the end of the screen and do a
refresh.  However, this causes a lot of flicker.  It is acceptably
fast, but I wonder if I can do better.

* I am using add_wch to print individual characters.  Now I want to
support the alternate character set.  The client receives all characters
in UCS-4, so I will define a default mapping between ACS_* characters
and UCS-4.  However, can I output ACS_* characters with add_wch?  It is
not clear to me if setcchar should accept the macros.

If this is not possible, do I need to set the attribute and call addch
instead?

One idea would be for ncurses to define a mapping from UCS-4 to ACS, so
that you can just use unicode characters.

* Not an ncurses question, but still:  as I am currently writing the
console of the GNU/Hurd system, I am implementing all those terminal
capabilities etc.  Do you have wishlist items regarding to that?
Eg, is there a particular capability you want to see that allows for
nifty optimization in ncurses?  Is it preferred to be ECMA-48 compatible
or VT100 compatible where both conflict?  I would like to send in the
current state of the terminfo file I use for the console, would you like
to review it and comment on it?

Thanks,
Marcus