Windows Manager

[Chua Wen Ching]

My org is using dumb terminal with monochrome monitors and keyboards. XWindows is not installed. How to use tput to create a Windows Manager (with scroll bar and drop down menu capability)? Any solution in bourne/POSIX/korn shell scripting???

[harry d brown jr · Accepted solution]

look at how "sam" does it. Of course it will take a million lines of code (exageration) to do it.

live free or die
harry

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

# perl -Mcurses

?? http://search.cpan.org/author/WPS/Curses-1.06/Curses.pm
?? http://search.cpan.org/author/MMAKAAY/Curses-UI-0.71/lib/Curses/UI.pm
?? http://search.cpan.org/author/MMAKAAY/Curses-UI-0.71/lib/Curses/UI/Window.pm

[Chua Wen Ching]

Wow, do i need to install the perl curses module (*.pm). I think it will take some time when my org decide to upgrade perl. Any sample bourne/posix/ksh script to do a simple windows manager. I just want to see how complicated it take to use bourne shell script to do a simple window. :D. Thank you.

[Chua Wen Ching]

Hmm...no other solutions other than using perl? Anyway thanks for replying.

[Bill Hassell]

It will be a massive job involving thousands of lines of code to provide the type of functionality you are asking about. When you see SAM running and you select an item with the tab key, a large amount of code is tracking where you are on the screen as well as what is in the menus.

When you select an menu, the apparent pulldown is just text that overlays the current image, but complicated because the overlay must 'remember' what was erased, then replaced when the pulldown menu goes away. It looks simple but the code behind it is quite complex. Actually, SAM has used a special library of calls from OBAM so the effort is a bit easier.

But to code this in shell scripts will take many weeks of work. Unix has always been a command line operating system and there are a number of examples of menu programs for dumb terminals in the shell programming manuals.

Perl on HP-UX is usually version 4, considered to be completely obsolete and exists to run q4 scripts for crash dump analysis. You can download Perl 5.6.1 from HP at: software.hp.com in the Development Tools section. Perl is a much more powerful tool for such a task but even so, the effort may be quite intense since you'll need to learn Perl and then learn the Curses constructs and play with the results.

[Chua Wen Ching]

Sorry for not replying lately as i am busy with my projects.

Dear Bill Hassell, thanks for your advise. Is there any possible package (dialogs managers) to call from HP-UX 10.20? Something like Curses but can also work on bourne shell script. What i mean is like java, where you can call packages? Is it possible? Anyway thanks for replying.