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The author seems to really not like ncurses. But why? Is there something wrong with it?

by jl6 4y ago

lupire 4y ago
The article has no pictures of what it is selling, so it just seems like a rant, as suggested by the opening profanity. I don't see how I can use what they are saying to make a TUI.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Are you trying? I've been brutally bashing my head against some ancient telnet shit recently and this actually was concretely helpful and I could apply it immediately. The tone and presentation seem calculated to annoy HN readers (nice) but this article has a bunch of difficult-to-uncover details with just enough context to apply them if you actually have a use for them and a desire to.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
The only reason I found in the article was "because jesus f. christ" (near the end). Therefore I assume the author has religious objections against nurses. /s In fact they mention various issues with their approach that nurses would fix automatically and without the user having to configure stuff in the app: > sadly, true color isn't supported on many terminals, urxvt tragically included. for this reason, your program should never rely on it, and abstract these settings away to be configured by the user. Apparently they don't care about the great terminal-independence ncurses offers because these ANSI sequences will only work fully on terminal emulators. And as they mention even those differ in supported features. Ncurses was created precisely to abstract these differences. It's not just good for "obscure dumb terminals from 1983". It would also be quite a pain having to deal with terminal resize events etc when building a TUI. And no, doing a full screen rewrite for each minor update does not make for smooth TUIs. Yes modern hardware is fast but sometimes you're on a slow SSH connection. Personally I still use real terminals too at times (I own a real VT520 and love it) and apps that are totally ignoring termcap/terminfo are super annoying. But I know this is niche. PS: Also from the article: > also, i have effectively zero pull in the tech community and am also kind of a controversial character who is liable to give projects a bad reputation, which i don't normally care about Gee, I wonder why...
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  PS: AUtocorrect seems to have changed all my 'ncurses' instances to 'nurses', doh
AdamH12113 4y ago
I don’t think I have ever once managed to compile an ncurses-based program on Windows, even if every other library works fine.

The author seems to really not like ncurses. But why? Is there something wrong with it?

by jl6 4y ago

The author seems to really not like ncurses. But why? Is there something wrong with it?

The article has no pictures of what it is selling, so it just seems like a rant, as suggested by the opening profanity. I don't see how I can use what they are saying to make a TUI.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
Are you trying? I've been brutally bashing my head against some ancient telnet shit recently and this actually was concretely helpful and I could apply it immediately. The tone and presentation seem calculated to annoy HN readers (nice) but this article has a bunch of difficult-to-uncover details with just enough context to apply them if you actually have a use for them and a desire to.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

The only reason I found in the article was "because jesus f. christ" (near the end). Therefore I assume the author has religious objections against nurses. /s In fact they mention various issues with their approach that nurses would fix automatically and without the user having to configure stuff in the app: > sadly, true color isn't supported on many terminals, urxvt tragically included. for this reason, your program should never rely on it, and abstract these settings away to be configured by the user. Apparently they don't care about the great terminal-independence ncurses offers because these ANSI sequences will only work fully on terminal emulators. And as they mention even those differ in supported features. Ncurses was created precisely to abstract these differences. It's not just good for "obscure dumb terminals from 1983". It would also be quite a pain having to deal with terminal resize events etc when building a TUI. And no, doing a full screen rewrite for each minor update does not make for smooth TUIs. Yes modern hardware is fast but sometimes you're on a slow SSH connection. Personally I still use real terminals too at times (I own a real VT520 and love it) and apps that are totally ignoring termcap/terminfo are super annoying. But I know this is niche. PS: Also from the article: > also, i have effectively zero pull in the tech community and am also kind of a controversial character who is liable to give projects a bad reputation, which i don't normally care about Gee, I wonder why...

GekkePrutser 4y ago
PS: AUtocorrect seems to have changed all my 'ncurses' instances to 'nurses', doh

AdamH12113 4y ago

I don’t think I have ever once managed to compile an ncurses-based program on Windows, even if every other library works fine.