HeathField Strange Ideas!

[Richard]

Chris Hills said:

Chris, you're arguing with a troll. What's more, you're arguing with a
troll who broadly agrees with you. When you find yourself in broad
agreement with a troll, you need to think very carefully about why that
is.

Or maybe you need to think about why you label most people who don't
like your arrogant posturing "trolls". You're not happy unless you are
putting people down or generally showing off. A shame since your C
skills are undoubtedly amongst the best.

That is already what it is - discussions about C.

<snip>

Sorry. No "snip". You have not addressed the issues. You have done your
typical, smug, head in the sand bit.

Agreed. And we do.

No. You don't. You didn't actually read anything said. You are too self
obsessed to see anything other than your own view. You remind me of
some religious bible basher who refuses to contemplate other religions.

Show me. Show me how you can access the screen or keyboard using C.

You see? There is one way. The Richard Heathfield way. You are
pretending to agree with Chris to curry favour, but in reality you agree
with nothing he said.

Show me. Show me this "standard" way for accessing the screen or
keyboard in C. This I have to see.

Gah.

 

[Kenneth Brody]

Chris Hills said: [...]

A discussion on accessing the screen and or keyboard using C is a
valid one here.

Show me. Show me how you can access the screen or keyboard using C.

You see? There is one way. The Richard Heathfield way. You are
pretending to agree with Chris to curry favour, but in reality you agree
with nothing he said.

I notice you didn't actually answer the question.

I guess it depends on your definition of "access", "screen", and
"keyboard". I can certainly read from a keyboard if it is attached
to stdin, and I can certainly output to a screen it it if attached
to stdout and/or stderr. Does this count as "accessing" them?

On the other hand, I have certainly written and used programs which
really want something else attached to stdin, such as a utility to
parse the output of another program, and perhaps even pass that to
yet another program.

Gah.

Again, I see no actual reply to the request.

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[Kenny McCormack]

(some twit penned)

They are only OT in the eyes of a small but vocal group who are slowly
killing this NG.

At one time c.l.c used to be the place to go for information on C . Now
there are many other forums (fora, Ed.) and c.l.c is getting (a)
reputation for unhelpful pedantry

Gee, ya think???

 

[Al Balmer]

A discussion on accessing the screen and or keyboard using C is a valid
one here. There is no portable way of doing it but there are some
"standard" ways of doing it to make it more portable. EG Curses is
available for many platforms.

Perhaps you should broaden your reading. This question went to
comp.programming and was adequately discussed there, in the proper
venue. Some contributors to the thread were c.l.c. regulars.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Al Balmer said:

Perhaps you should broaden your reading. This question went to
comp.programming and was adequately discussed there, in the proper
venue.

I'm not actually convinced that c.p was in fact the proper venue for
such a question. I think comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 would have
been a better place. But yes, Chris Hills needs to discover that Usenet
consists of more than just comp.std.c and comp.lang.c.

I'm still waiting for Chris to demonstrate his "standard" way of
accessing the screen or keyboard.

 

[Chris Hills]

Al Balmer said:


I'm not actually convinced that c.p was in fact the proper venue for
such a question. I think comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 would have
been a better place.

Why? None of the targets were MS windows based...

But yes, Chris Hills needs to discover that Usenet
consists of more than just comp.std.c and comp.lang.c.

I know. In my time I have started an alt.* NG More to the point with
pedants screaming OT at every opportunity, as I have been saying, there
are now many other C forum that are more popular and widely used than
c.l.c is. unfortunately due the actions of a few c.l.c is becoming a
backwater.

I'm still waiting for Chris to demonstrate his "standard" way of
accessing the screen or keyboard.

I said there are several "standard" ways. Curses is common. It depends
on your system. This is something that could be discussed here. Rather
than frightening off people who don't realise their way is but one of
several

However none of these common methods are described in the C standard BUT
as I keel saying this NG is for discussing C. it is you and a few others
who add "as described in our definition of the C standard"

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Chris Hills said:

Why? None of the targets were MS windows based...

The example I had in mind was the question regarding keyboard access
using Visual Studio under Windows XP. If you had a different example in
mind, then obviously we're talking about different things.

I know.

Delighted to hear it.

In my time I have started an alt.* NG More to the point with
pedants screaming OT at every opportunity, as I have been saying,
there are now many other C forum that are more popular and widely used
than c.l.c is. unfortunately due the actions of a few c.l.c is
becoming a backwater.

It is? The only reason I have time to "do clc" is because I've plonked
the whole of gmail, unplonking only those who shine (or at least are
not completely rusted shut) in material quoted by others. This
newsgroup is just about as busy as it ever was.

I said there are several "standard" ways.

Oh yes, so you did. Please demonstrate one such way, and I'll test
whether it actually works.

 

[Keith Thompson]

They are only OT in the eyes of a small but vocal group who are
slowly killing this NG.

At one time c.l.c used to be the place to go for information on C
. Now there are many other forums and c.l.c is getting reputation for
unhelpful pedantry

Ok, here's an example. Yesterday, somebody posted a question with the
subject "Exported functions in shared libraries" about the 'stat'
system call. Here's my followup:

| > I want to call the 'stat' system call dynamically.
| >
| > In other words, I want to use the dlopen to dynamically load a shared
| > library and bind to the stat function using dlsym. I want to be able
| > to do this on Linux (Ubuntu) and Mac OS X.
| [snip]
|
| Try comp.unix.programmer.

The question, though it was related to C, was clearly off-topic. At
the very least, I hope you'll agree that comp.unix.programmer would
have been a better place to ask. So what do you think I should have
done? Should I have ignored it? Should I have tried to answer the
question here?

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Keith Thompson said:

Ok, here's an example. Yesterday, somebody posted a question with the
subject "Exported functions in shared libraries" about the 'stat'
system call. Here's my followup:

| Try comp.unix.programmer.

The question, though it was related to C, was clearly off-topic.

Indeed. The best advice for the OP was a redirect to a newsgroup where
his question could be dealt with by Unix experts. And that's precisely
what you supplied.

 

[Charlton Wilbur]

CH> I know. In my time I have started an alt.* NG More to the
CH> point with pedants screaming OT at every opportunity, as I
CH> have been saying, there are now many other C forum that are
CH> more popular and widely used than c.l.c is. unfortunately due
CH> the actions of a few c.l.c is becoming a backwater.

Given that there are regularly over a hundred posts a day in this
newsgroup and that there are several regular posters who are highly
knowledgeable about C, I disupte that claim.

Popularity is not a measure of value. If 100 homework-seeking
newbies, friendly but clueless and frequently wrong "experts,"
attention-seeking trolls, and system- or compiler-specific posters
suddenly started posting on comp.lang.c, it would no doubt improve the
popularity of comp.lang.c. It would not increase its value, however,
and would most likely decrease it significantly. For that matter, we
routinely have our share of all four categories listed above: do
Umesh, Malcolm McLean, Kenny McCormack, and Jacob Navia really add so
much that we want dozens more just like them?

Nobody is arguing that removing the topicality requirement would not
make comp.lang.c more popular. We *are* arguing that it would make
comp.lang.c far less valuable, and that in this case we strongly
prefer a valuable but unpopular "backwater" to the proposed alternative.

Charlton

 

[Kenneth Brody]

I said there are several "standard" ways. Curses is common. It depends
on your system. This is something that could be discussed here. Rather
than frightening off people who don't realise their way is but one of
several

However none of these common methods are described in the C standard BUT
as I keel saying this NG is for discussing C. it is you and a few others
who add "as described in our definition of the C standard"

Even if there is a "standard curses", it's still not relevent here,
any more than POSIX or Berkeley Sockets. While any and all of these
may be widely available on a multitude of platforms, and can be called
by a C program, they are not a part of C itself, any more than the
Windows GDI interface is a part of C.

Many people here probably don't even care if a program happens to use
such functions -- as long as they are not part of the problem at hand.
(Of course, in that case, they could probably be eliminated from any
sample code as well.)

That said, however, many people post here with questions specifically
related to such OT things, such as "how can I do X with sockets", or
"how come SomeWindowsAPICall() isn't working right".

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[Kenneth Brody]

Gee, ya think???

Strange... When I have a question about some obscure part of C, or
simply a question tangential to some other post, I come here. Even
with 23+ years of C programming experience, I have still learned a
few things here. (Part of it because I "learned" some things before
there was a C90, and so I had to code around some assumptions that
no longer hold true.)

If this group turned into a C free-for-all, with questions about how
to draw dotted red lines, which hash algorithm is "best", and how to
detect that the left meta key is pressed, (as long as your intention
was to put such code in a file with a ".c" extension) it would be
less valuable to me at least. (And I'm sure to many of the other
"regulars" as well.)

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[Al Balmer]

Al Balmer said:


I'm not actually convinced that c.p was in fact the proper venue for
such a question.

Probably I should call it an acceptable venue

I think comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 would have
been a better place.

I didn't recall whether the OP actually presented it as a Windows
problem. If he was looking for a Windows answer, then of course you're
right.

 

[Al Balmer]

<[email protected]> writes

I know. In my time I have started an alt.* NG More to the point with
pedants screaming OT at every opportunity, as I have been saying, there
are now many other C forum that are more popular and widely used than
c.l.c is. unfortunately due the actions of a few c.l.c is becoming a
backwater.

Then your course is clear. Avail yourself of the many other C forum
(sic) and leave us the backwaters.

I said there are several "standard" ways. Curses is common.

"Common" != "standard. Curses is common on *nix-like systems, but many

It depends
on your system. This is something that could be discussed here. Rather
than frightening off people who don't realise their way is but one of
several

Do you really think we frighten people here? I have on occasion,
posted to the wrong group (including this one, a few years ago <g>)
and been told where to get better information. I found myself more
grateful than frightened.

However none of these common methods are described in the C standard BUT
as I keel saying this NG is for discussing C. it is you and a few others
who add "as described in our definition of the C standard"

Actually, it seems to be you and a (very) few others who disagree.

 

[Keith Thompson]

Keith Thompson said:



Indeed. The best advice for the OP was a redirect to a newsgroup where
his question could be dealt with by Unix experts. And that's precisely
what you supplied.

Yes, I know *you* know that. I'm trying to find out what Chris Hills
thinks I should have done, since any mention that something is
off-topic seems to bother him so much. (In a public forum like this,
it can be hard to tell whether a question is directed to the group at
large or to a single person; I should have made that clearer.)

Chris?

 

[Old Wolf]

At one time c.l.c used to be the place to go for information on C . Now
there are many other forums and c.l.c is getting reputation for
unhelpful pedantry

I'm quite glad that I don't get faced with "How do I
make my cursor frilly in Windows 98 .. using C" every
day. There's dozens of new, on-topic threads a day already.

It suits me quite well that this newsgroup should be
only for discussing issues that are relevant to all C
implementations, not just Windows or Unix variants
(neither of which I program on regularly).

If I have an issue with unix-related libraries such
as curses, I post on c.u.p and usually get a useful
answer. I don't see why other people can't do the
same, nor why you even go to defend those other people.

There is no portable way of doing it but there are some
"standard" ways of doing it to make it more portable.
EG Curses is available for many platforms.

At one time ClC used to be the centre for C discussion world wide.

curses isn't available for the platforms I program on.
There is already a newsgroup where curses is topical,
and curses experts post. What is to be gained by having
two such newsgroups? All that would do is dilute the
attention of the experts.

Simply sending people to Linux and Windows NG's removes them from this
one. They will probably end up on a Windows or Gcc/Linux group without
ever realising that MS-C is GCC is NOT the standard.

Sounds like you're making things up now. I don't see
what could be clearer than "this is not covered by
the C standard, go to newsgroup X".

Now it is one of the minor backwaters.

I can't speak for anyone else, but this is by far and away
the best C forum I'm aware of. All the other ones are
filled with complaints from idiots about how to use
some API that I couldn't give a crap about, or how to
operate their IDE, or how to make their program run 1
picosecond faster by obfuscating their source, etc. etc. etc.

 

[Old Wolf]

I didn't see any request like that. Anyway I've come to the conclusion
it's useless to argue here - the consensus is obviously that C is an
academic language that exists in theory but can never be used in
practice, at least not if you want to do something as basic as seeing
whether a key was pressed. I'll stick with reading books.

Just call os_get_keyin(). It returns 0 if no key
is pressed, 'f' if the paper feed key is pressed,
'c' if Cancel is pressed. It's all covered in the
manual.

NB. In case I don't see your reply, direct your
followups to Chris Hills.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

Indeed. The best advice for the OP was a redirect to a newsgroup where
his question could be dealt with by Unix experts. And that's precisely
what you supplied.

You need to get your tongue out of Keith's, well, you know...

 

[Dik T. Winter]

> In article <[email protected]>,

>
> Gee, ya think???

At one time net.lang.c used to be the place for information on C. And
if you asked anything that was non-standard (i.e. K&R), the implied OS
was Unix. With the big renaming not only net.lang.c was renamed, but
also a number of OS specific newsgroups were added, so there was a better
platform to ask how to use "select(3)".

If somebody asks how to detect a keypress, the first question is: "on
what OS, and using what connection between the keyboard and the program?"
If the answer is Windows it should be "conio" (I think, but I cannot
check because I have no access to window machines where that is viable).
If the answer is a system running X you better learn the interface to
capture X events in your window (and that is not exactly trivial). If
the answer is MacOS 9.x, I have no idea (although I am currently typing
this on such a machine). If the answer is "ssh", "rsh", "telnet" or
some of their ilk, the answer is: "no way" (and that is the way I am
currently working).

But I will gladly inform the OP about how to do it in X.

 

[Dik T. Winter]

> In article <[email protected]>, Richard Heathfield

>
> I said there are several "standard" ways. Curses is common. It depends
> on your system.

How do I detect with curses the depression of the shift key? With curses
you do not detect key presses, you only find the *characters* entered as
soon as the OS has made them (from possibly various key presses). Also,
I do not see in curses a method to draw (say) a circle on the screen.
Curses is a completely character based Unixy library, in principle provided
character based interaction in a character based window.