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kolcon
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 21 Sep 2007
Posts: 96
Location: Europe, CZ
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 Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:26 pm Post subject: ncurses or slang? |
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Hello,
after years of Gentoo usage I am still confused about ncurses and slang.
I see debates going back to 1999.
Now I see mc dropped ncurses in favour of slang.
So, what is their difference and which is "better"?
Thanks... |
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eccerr0r
Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9838
Location: almost Mile High in the USA
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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Apparently they both have text mode features that programs need.
I suppose it's hard to tell which is "better" as they're different. Ncurses has its roots in curses which is a classic UN*X library so it sticks around. Slang is somewhat of a newcomer, it's apparently a full interpreted programming language that has text windowing features, and these windowing features is what programs use more. It also seems to claim to have text spew reduction, which speeds up usage on slow speed terminals (which of course tends not to be an issue anymore...)
Ncurses is smaller as it doesn't have a full interpreter...
I suppose we just have to use whichever library our favorite apps use. Unless you're willing to rewrite for the other library?
I hate slang. Very confusing to websearch...
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PaulBredbury
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Joined: 14 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:12 pm Post subject: Re: ncurses or slang? |
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| kolcon wrote: | | which is "better"? |
ncurses is a dependency in far more apps than slang.
ncurses is needed for bash, so people will have it installed anyway.
Therefore for a Gentooer (or personal-distro-compiler), it's better, using my limited logic  |
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gorkypl
Guru
Joined: 04 Oct 2010
Posts: 444
Location: Kraków, PL
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:35 pm Post subject: Re: ncurses or slang? |
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| kolcon wrote: |
Now I see mc dropped ncurses in favour of slang.
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Quite the opposite - ncurses is default and it does not even has a flag in mc, while slang needs to be explicitly enabled via USE.
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eccerr0r
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Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9838
Location: almost Mile High in the USA
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 7:23 pm Post subject: |
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Kolcon, where are you seeing ncurses being dropped?
Currently Gentoo/Portage, if USE=slang then slang is used, else ncurses is used.
For reuse of as much code as possible and to save disk space I'd prefer ncurses; but there are a number of slang apps out there now too...
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kolcon
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 21 Sep 2007
Posts: 96
Location: Europe, CZ
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| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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| eccerr0r wrote: | Kolcon, where are you seeing ncurses being dropped?
Currently Gentoo/Portage, if USE=slang then slang is used, else ncurses is used.
For reuse of as much code as possible and to save disk space I'd prefer ncurses; but there are a number of slang apps out there now too... |
OK, thanks to everybody for explanations. I though that maybe one obsoletes the other,
but it does not seem to be the case.
It got me wondering as I saw (*-ncurses) for the mc package during one emerge -u world... |
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