[Pnet-developers] pnetcurses - extending this library for more support

[Christopher Sawyer]

Hi.

I have found great interested in building up more functionality in pnetcurses.  
Namely, it is lacking hooks into common functions like wgetyx(), etc.  I have 
added these and would like to submit them for comment to the original source 
to whomever is maintaining it.

I am busy building a .NET OO->pnetcurses->curses wrapper library to make 
developing complex console apps using C#/VB.NET a lot easier (hint: think 
TurboVision in the days of DOS+Pascal).  However, I needed more exposure in 
the pnetcurses wrapper to underlying functionality to get better control over 
the terminal.  The wrapper currently works under both Mono and DotGNU and 
I've already completed 6 different widgets and am working on more.

I have often run into the problem where I need to develop an application 
around a complex background process, but I don't need/want the complexity of 
IIS/Apache and would rather ssh in, sign on, pick something on a menu to let 
it run, then get out.  I don't think console apps will ever go away, and 
certainly they are helpful for rapid admin tasks and providing legacy 
data-entry interfaces for those who prefer to work keyboard-only.

--Christopher Sawyer