Package       : Curses::UI
Author        : Maurice Makaay
E-mailaddress : maurice@gitaar.net
Licence       : Curses::UI is free software and it is distributed 
                under the same license as perl itself.
Code maturity : The code is still in its alfa stage, so interfaces
                might change during development.
                

Please do let me know if you find these modules useful and let me
know if any appliction is built using them.

What is Curses::UI?
===================

A UI framework based on the curses library. Curses::UI contains
several widgets which can be used to build a user interface:

- Widget (widget base element)
- Calendar
- Container (container base element)
- Window
- Label
- Listbox 
- Radiobuttonbox
- PasswordEntry
- Popupbox (a.k.a. pulldown- or dropdown menu)
- Progressbar
- Buttonbox 
- Checkbox
- MenuBar (uses MenuListbox)
- Texteditor (has features like word wrapping and undo)
- Textviewer
- Textentry

There are also a couple of dialog windows available:

- Standard dialog window (message + buttons)
- Error dialog window
- Filebrowser 
- Status window (no interaction so actually not a dialog)
- Progress window (no interaction so actually not a dialog)

Examples:
=========

Examples are in the distribution's "examples" directory.
You do not have to install this distribution to test these
examples.

There aren't many examples yet, but the widgets are pretty much
finished and functional. So far I have only built some small example
applications using the Curses::UI widget-set, so interfacing with 
them might miss out on some aspects, but as soon as I am going to
build the project for which I created these widgets, this might
change. 

If you want me to add a particular functionality or 
widget type, please feel free to send me an e-mail 
(maurice@gitaar.net) and I'll see what I can do for you.
Patches are even better :-)


Some random features:
=====================

- Only basic curses library calls are used, so the Curses::UI
  modules will work on non-ncurses systems (they were developed on 
  a Solaris 5.8 system without ncurses);

- Applications that are built using these modules will guard for
  the WINCH signal (window resize) and resize the used widgets
  if the window resizes. I haven't figured out what to do
  if the screen is too smal to show one or more of the widgets. 
  Right now, the application will die. But that, of course, isn't 
  the most elegant way to handle this exception ;-) 

- The Curses::UI::ListBox widget is searchable using a "less"-like
  system. So if a listbox widget has focus, pressing "/" or "?"
  will invoke a search on the contents of the listbox. Since the
  listbox is also used for RadioButtons, PopupBoxes and MenuListboxes,
  all these are automatically searschable as well;

- The texteditor supports word wrapping, but the word wrapping can
  also be disabled (using CTRL+W). If word wrapping is enabled, 
  hard returns can be enabled or disabled using CTRL+R. If hard
  returns are enabled, a diamond character will show the positions
  of hard returns. Some emacs bindings are supported (CTRL+B =
  cursor back, CTRL+F = cursor forward, CTRL+P = cursor up, 
  CTRL+N = cursor down, CTRL+A = beginning of line, CTRL+E = end
  of line, CTRL+D = delete character, CTRL+K = delete till end of line).
  Made an error? No problem. CTRL+Z will undo up to 20 steps (can 
  be configured to go further back). A maximum length for the
  text? No problem! The TextEntry widget is a texteditor which has
  been told that it only contains a single line. So all texteditor
  features are available in the TextEntry (as far as applicable);

- The base element of most widgets (Curses::UI::Widget) has the 
  ability of showing "scrollbars" for both the x- and y-direction. 
  These scrollbars can be drawn on all sides of the widget
  (left, right, top and bottom). The scrollbar is not really a 
  scrollbar but more a document location indicator, but since it 
  mimics a scrollbar I decided to call it a scrollbar (sounds 
  simple eh? :-). This ability makes it easy to create widgets
  with scrollbars on them.