CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gccncursesextended-ascii
user3529891
user3529891

Reputation: 35

gcc ncurses printing extend characters (glyphs) such as char 223

I am writing a terminal program for the Raspberry Pi using ncurses. I want to add a shadow around a box. I want to use mvaddch() to print extended characters such as char 233 (upper half box character). What would be the syntax for the mvaddch() command? Or is there another way to accomplish this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 896

Answers (1)

Thomas Dickey
Thomas Dickey

Reputation: 54465

You're probably referring to something like code page 866. ncurses will assume your terminal shows characters consistent with the locale encoding, which probably is UTF-8. So (unless you want to convert the characters in your program) the way to go is using Unicode values.

The Unicode organization has tables which you can use to lookup a particular code, e.g., ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/PC/CP866.TXT. For your example, the relevant row is

0xdf   0x2580   #UPPER HALF BLOCK

(because 0xdf is 223). You would use the Unicode 0x2580 in a call to the function mvaddwstr, e.g.

wchar_t mydata[] = { 0x2580, 0 };
mvaddwstr(0,0, mydata);

(the similarly-named wadd_wch uses a data structure which is more complicated).

You would have to link with the ncursesw library, and of course initialize your program's locale using setlocale as mentioned in the ncurses manual page.

Upvotes: 1

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