ncurses demo

[Rick Engebretson]

Perhaps a new demo is worth considering.

I've been playing with the command "stty [ rows M ] [ cols N ]" on a 
linux framebuffer (1024 x768) console. The ncurses / Gnu Pascal demo 
"crtdemo" draws out many features of ncurses that don't seem widely 
appreciated. For example, the console provides a lot of "state" and the 
pascal demo reveals more of this.

The ncurses package is quite powerful on a linux framebuffer (graphics) 
console. SuSE 8.1 installs a framebuffer kernel driver automatically 
with the nVidia TNT2 graphics card. There are several linux framebuffer 
development groups, most are quite active.

To try Gnu Pascal, I suggest the gpc-2.1 and gcc-core-2.95.2 
combination. You can set up a stand-alone compiler under your /home/user 
directory and not mess up your system directories.

I realize this is not a "portable" or "legacy" whatever. But I believe 
the ncurses approach to console control is seriously underappreciated.
Rick.