Re: 'touchcell' functions?

[Bill Gray]

On 6/27/23 03:50, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 02:11:28PM -0400, Bill Gray wrote:
> >     Am I correct in thinking that these functions don't exist,  in ncurses or
> > elsewhere?  (PDCurses and PDCursesMod provide some of this information,  but
> > only by examining internal WINDOW struct data.)
>
> correct - not in NetBSD curses, either (which inherits some little-used
> functions from around 1990 in 4.4BSD).
>
> It could be done in ncurses and other implementations using the first/last
> character change on a given line,

   Ah,  yes... I see ncurses has 'firstchar' and 'lastchar' fields 
similar to the _firstch and _lastch ones in PDCurses and PDCursesMod.

> but I don't recall any expressed need for this (ymmv).

   The need is,  I admit,  _very_ minor.  In the PDCurses and 
PDCursesMod panel libraries,  overlapping windows are checked with logic 
that boils down to "if this line in window1 is touched,  touch the 
corresponding line in window2."  Ideally,  we would instead say "if the 
touched range in this line in window1 overlaps window2,  then touch the 
corresponding cells in window2."

   The PDCurses* panel libraries have deeper issues,  though,  so I 
think I'll drop this as "not needed".

Thanks!          -- Bill