From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Dec 11 02:00:18 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id CAA27578 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 11 Dec 1997 02:00:18 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from time.cdrom.com (root@time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id CAA27544 for ; Thu, 11 Dec 1997 02:00:13 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@time.cdrom.com) Received: from time.cdrom.com (jkh@localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.8.7/8.6.9) with ESMTP id CAA26110; Thu, 11 Dec 1997 02:00:08 -0800 (PST) To: Jonathan Mini cc: The Classiest Man Alive , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why so many steps to build new kernel? In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 11 Dec 1997 01:37:34 PST." <19971211013734.16942@micron.mini.net> Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 02:00:08 -0800 Message-ID: <26106.881834408@time.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > If I were to write another (smaller, and more acceptable) CUI > would you be interested in using it in sysinstall also? YES! YES! Or, to put it another way, YES! :-) The alternative is TurboVision and, as much as I rather like it as a CUI toolkit and find its look-and-feel to be second to none in the CUI domain (in fact, I think I can say without fear of hyperbole that it goes about as far as it's possible to go with a CUI, period), there's just this big huge problem with it. It's in C++. I hate C++ and so do just about all of the other installation hackers, so we have something of an impasse in the interface group right now (heck, for the last 8 months even). Give me something that's written in straight C and easy to wrap into TCL (which should be possible unless you decide to pass all kinds of nasty structures around and expose that in the C API) and I'll be your friend for life. OK, so maybe that doesn't sound like such a treat, so let me just say that I'd really really appreciate it and so would many others. :) We basically just need: o Buttons - pushbutton, radio, checkbox. o Scrolling list menus (or scrolling arrays of buttons, however you want to conceptualize it) o Entry fields with reasonably emacs-like character editing support. o Scrolling text boxes and simple text fields. o Checkbox / Radio o Gauges. o Compound dialogs. o Simple forms entry. And we could do everything that sysinstall does messily with libdialog today. Support for color and the mouse would be optional niceties, but not strictly necessary. Would have to look reasonably decent in at least syscons and xterm (vt100) display modes and that's about it. What do you think? Jordan