ANSI C screen manipulation?

[Fogus]

I have written a portable chess program using ANSI C, however at the
moment my 'console' display is quite ugly. It currently uses rote
printfs to output a page at a time of the board as well as other
useful information. These pages simply scroll one after the other.
However, in reality a better solution would be to (at minimum) clear
the screen (or a portion thereof) before displaying the next page.
However, I want portability and therefore do not want to rely on
system calls or non-standard libs such as curses. Are there common
implementations available that I may have missed?

Thank you in advance.
-m

 

[Mike Wahler]

I have written a portable chess program using ANSI C, however at the
moment my 'console' display is quite ugly. It currently uses rote
printfs to output a page at a time of the board as well as other
useful information. These pages simply scroll one after the other.
However, in reality a better solution would be to (at minimum) clear
the screen (or a portion thereof) before displaying the next page.
However, I want portability and therefore do not want to rely on
system calls or non-standard libs such as curses. Are there common
implementations available that I may have missed?

There are many implementations, all of which are platform-dependent.
Standard C does not have any inherent support for video displays,
or any other hardware device. You'll need a platform-specific
solution. If you intend to port the code, then isolate this part,
so it can be easily be replaced with code specific to the
other platforms.

-Mike

 

[Thomas Matthews]

I have written a portable chess program using ANSI C, however at the
moment my 'console' display is quite ugly. It currently uses rote
printfs to output a page at a time of the board as well as other
useful information. These pages simply scroll one after the other.
However, in reality a better solution would be to (at minimum) clear
the screen (or a portion thereof) before displaying the next page.
However, I want portability and therefore do not want to rely on
system calls or non-standard libs such as curses. Are there common
implementations available that I may have missed?

Thank you in advance.
-m

There are no common functions for manipulating cursors or screens
since not every platform has a screen and those that do have
different methods for handling them.

You could build yourself a interface of functions available on
your target platforms. Create a library for each platform that
uses system specific features. Link in a different library
based upon the target platform.

--
Thomas Matthews

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[Nudge]

I have written a portable chess program using ANSI C, however at

the moment my 'console' display is quite ugly. It currently uses
rote printfs to output a page at a time of the board as well as
other useful information. These pages simply scroll one after
the other. However, in reality a better solution would be to (at
minimum) clear the screen (or a portion thereof) before
displaying the next page. However, I want portability and
therefore do not want to rely on system calls or non-standard
libs such as curses. Are there common implementations available
that I may have missed?

Your question seems close to FAQ 19.4
http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/c-faq/q19.4.html

 

[CBFalconer]

I have written a portable chess program using ANSI C, however at the
moment my 'console' display is quite ugly. It currently uses rote
printfs to output a page at a time of the board as well as other
useful information. These pages simply scroll one after the other.
However, in reality a better solution would be to (at minimum) clear
the screen (or a portion thereof) before displaying the next page.
However, I want portability and therefore do not want to rely on
system calls or non-standard libs such as curses. Are there common
implementations available that I may have missed?

Not in portable standard C. Congratulations on building a
portable system. You can now supply non-portable alternatives by
isolating those output routines in a file, and writing custom
replacements for particular systems.

 

[Mike Wahler]

I've always been interested in chess and computer chess
programs. May I see your code? (if it's very large, you could
post it on the web and send a link, or email me directly.)

If you'd rather not share it, I understand, and thanks anyway.

-Mike