Date:	Wed, 29 Oct 1997 11:16:42 +0200 (IST)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To:	Charles Krug <charles AT pentek DOT com>
cc:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Text mode windowing
In-Reply-To:	<3456339B.6FBE6F9B@pentek.com>
Message-ID:	<Pine.SUN.3.91.971029111601.26592W-100000@is>
MIME-Version:	1.0

On Tue, 28 Oct 1997, Charles Krug wrote:

> 1. Write the display routines using int21 and int10.  This is very
> familiar territory for me, but I wonder if there isn't a better way that
> can be done from protected mode.

There's a better way even from real mode: direct video memory access.
Please read the description of `conio' functions in the library
reference (from the DOS prompt type "info libc func conio" and read
there).

And believe me: you DON'T want to mess with int21 and int10, unless
you absolutely *have* to.  They are not only terribly slow, they are
also harder to use from a protected-mode program; you will have to
unlearn some of the things you know from real-mode world, if you use
these.

> 4. Link using an existing library that provides some of the same
> functions.  Unfortunatly, the only one's that I have access to are real
> mode--and frankly not much easier than writing my own int10 routines.

One obvious alternative is the curses library.  Its public domain
implementation, called PDCurses, is available as v2tk/pdcNN.zip from
the same place you get DJGPP (NN is a version number).  Curses are
available on many Unix systems, so it is a portable solution.

For other alternatives, search the DJGPP mail traffic archives at
http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/mail-archives/ for words like GUI,
text-mode and such.  There are quite a few text-mode GUI libraries
that support DJGPP, and announcements are posted regularly to this
group.

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