Re: Screen management in C

On 2024-12-27 14:24:05 +0000, David Meyer said:

If I want to do screen management in a C program on OpenVMS, is it better to use one of the curses packages in the C run-time library, or the SMG$ run-time library? If the latter, is there any documentation on how to call SMG$ routines from C?

Using HTTP via CGI or Tomcat or otherwise would be one potential choice, possibly viewing the UI using the old Mosaic port.
The older curses would be portable and familiar to C developers, though that well predates the more common and familiar ncurses.
Or use X11 with CDE or Motif, though that too is quite dated.
Maybe port termbox2 <https://github.com/termbox/termbox2> to OpenVMS as an alternative, and the effort involved with porting that code to OpenVMS should also increase familiarity with OpenVMS programming.
SMG has been mentioned, and that has been discussed here over the decades. Including previous discussions of the SMG calls that cause the most confusion.
If you want the full OpenVMS experience, scrounge yourself copies of the FMS or DECforms layered products somewhere, and write yourself a truly non-portable app.
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