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| Programmer's Guide to NCurses | 
| Author: Dan Gookin
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $54.99
Buy New: $1.64
You Save: $53.35 (97%)
Buy New/Used from $1.64
Avg. Customer Rating:  (2 reviews)
Sales Rank: 130993
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 556
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0470107596
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.432
EAN: 9780470107591
ASIN: 0470107596
Publication Date: February 20, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Programming the console in UNIX? Here's just what you need. First, you'll get a no-nonsense tutorial guide to the nCurses version 5.5 library, taking you from basic to advanced functions step by step. Then you'll find an A-to-Z reference of more than 175 nCurses functions, cross-referenced and illustrated with examples. With this all-purpose nCurses reference, youll: - Learn techniques that can be used to program Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, or any other UNIX-based OS.
- Program, control, and manipulate text on the terminal screen.
- Control interactive I/O, organize content into windows on the screen, and use color to highlight text and organize information.
- Use a mouse to further refine input.
- Create nCurses programs using your choice of editors.
- Find hundreds of quick, easy-to-understand programming examples.
Author Dan Gookin is known for making technology make sense. Buy this book and you'll see why.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Excellent Introduction to nCurses August 28, 2008
A couple weeks ago, I wanted to start playing around with the python curses module, but it's been forever since I've done anything with curses. So, for a bit of a refresher course, I picked up Dan Gookin's Programmer's Guide to nCurses (note this book covers the C API, not the python API).
I was actually very surprised at how good of an introduction Dan's book is. His laid back style of writing helps keep the reader entertained, and his short code snippets make for succinct examples that get right to the point without losing the reader in pages of boilerplate. The book itself is a fairly quick read too; although it officially weighs in at 556 pages, the last 300 pages or so is a reference manual for the nCurses API.
I honestly didn't have too many problems with the book, other than the occasional typo (including an off-by-one error in the code on p. 177). However, I would warn the reader that I had some issues with a few of Dan's examples. First, in many of the examples, the error handlers are missing a getch() call, which causes the program to immediately exit when an error occurs without pausing to let you see the errors. Also, in Chapter 8, some of the examples involving wrefresh() wouldn't work for me unless a call was made to refresh() beforehand (but after that call was made once, all the wrefresh() calls worked after that). Not sure if this is an issue with nCurses or with my system, so YMMV.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking to become familiar with the nCurses API. Although the book doesn't cover more advanced topics, like best practices for designing and building full-fledged nCurses applications, it still makes for a very good starting point.
 Both a Tutorial and a Reference Book March 16, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is just about the only book availablon NCurses. In fact, the only book even close is the O'Rielly Warthog book on Curses and it's twenty years old. As a book on nCurses, this one is really quite good. It starts quite simple with bringing up a text editor in a terminal window and a text editor and going on from there.
A little less than half the book is a tutorial that gives you specific 'cookbook' like instructions to get you familiar with the syntax and general concepts of working in NCurses. After that it becomes a reference book where each of the 175-180 (or so) functions in the NCurses library is discussed. There's usually a Format Reference, the Value Returned by the function, Notes, Examples, and a Sample Program that uses that function.
The book does not have a CD so the NCurses library of functions itself is not included. But it usually comes with the Linux disturbutions and is certainly available over the Internet.
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