Re: Question: How does ncurses store and handle "wide" characters?

[Bill Gray]

Hi Peter,  all,

   Just a note : the PDCursesMod documentation is almost
entirely from the contributors to PDCurses,  not me.  The
bit about "standing on the shoulders of giants" applies.

   In this case,  you really _are_ reading the C headers;
it's just that MANUAL.md is extracted from them (and the
C source).  I hadn't really thought about it much (it was
that way when I got here),  but I think that when I'm trying
to look something up in PDCurses/PDCursesMod,  I usually
look in the headers or source.  However,  there have been
times when just searching MANUAL.md made more sense.

   I should also note that I have a foot on Thomas' shoulders
as well.  My knowledge of Curses standards is quite minimal.
I mostly just figure that if ncurses does something in a
particular way,  it'll either be the standard way or will
be documented as "warning,  this is non-standard",  and
it'll be the way most people are expecting it to work.

   At this point,  given the "market share" of ncurses,
it's become a de facto standard.  When PDCursesMod doesn't
behave as ncurses does,  I generally think there ought to
be a good reason.  Sometimes,  there is (as with PDCurses'
implementation of full RGB colors).  Usually not,  though.

   Which leads me to ask,  Thomas,  about this comment :

   "...actually you're telling me that PDCurses has an
unnecessary deviation from X/Open Curses."

   I'm a little lost here.  I gather you're thinking the
wide-character support in PDCurses is enabled by default?
It isn't;  you have to compile with PDC_WIDE enabled.  Omit
that,  and only eight of the 21 character bits actually
get used.  Or are you seeing some other deviation?

Thanks!    -- Bill