DM>   If I were you, I'd be a little less quick to 
 DM> toss off Gerry's words of
 DM> wisdom.  He may not be the most senior echo member, but he
 DM> rarely spouts off in directions he doesn't know about.  At
 DM> least not in this echo.  ()

 DG>    Apparently there is a first time for everything.

But, for Gerry, this wasn't it.

 DM> Curses is a unix standard, not a Microsoft standard.
 DM> Almost by definition, then, it isn't built into VC6.  (Mind
 DM> you, it's not in most commercial DOS, Windows, or OS/2
 DM> compilers.)

 DG>   My question was basicly asking if anyone had done up the macros
 DG> or put together a function library for these functions.  Which are
 DG> common for porting from unix.   I didn't want to reinvent the wheel
 DG> again.

Sure - but that's not part of VC6.  Perhaps Gerry misinterpretted what you
were asking about.  Let me go back for a bit.

 GD> Online help?

Before this point, I can't recall what was said.  You probably asked how to
handle keystrokes or something, or where to find such information.

 DG> The only references to curses in the online docs was to actual
 DG> cursing at the compiler and it's programs!

(Funny: I actually thought most of the online help was, well, helpful,
although I wasn't looking for things they didn't have, only things they
did.)

 GD> OK, curses has nothing to do with VC6!!! If I
 GD> recall correctly, curses
 GD> has to do with handling keystrokes. I would check Unix archives...

This is almost entirely correct - curses has nothing to do with VC6. 
Curses is a library ... for handling screen output, not keystrokes.  Right
idea, wrong implementation.  The separation is correct: VC6 has nothing to
do with this layer of abstraction.

 DG>    Yea, Right Garry, controling screen output has nothing to do with
 DG>  VC6!!!

You seemed rather harsh, or you were changing subjects, or both. 
Controlling screen output has nothing to do with VC6, but with Win32 APIs. 
Curses is a layer around platform-specific APIs, which, in this case, would
wrap the Win32 console APIs.

 DG>   My question was basicly asking if anyone had done up the macros
 DG> or put together a function library for these functions.  Which are
 DG> common for porting from unix.   I didn't want to reinvent the wheel
 DG> again.

Fair enough.  I believe that there have been such ports, although I'm not
personally aware of any for MSVC, but only for GCC.  Mind you, I'm not
aware of any for Watcom, either...

 DG>     I didn't want to get into the gnu compiler.  Everything there
 DG> is copy lefted, and I'd like to possibly make a little bit of
 DG> money on my other projects.  The chess player is just one of

Common misconception.  The only thing that is copylefted is their code. 
The output of their code (i.e., the produced EXE or DLL) is *NOT*
copylefted, unless it includes copylefted code!  For example, the C RTL is
*not* copylefted, but the C++ libraries *are*.  So, if you can compile with
gcc without include "-lstdc++" or "-lstdcpp" on the
linker line, YOUR PROGRAM CAN BE SOLD AS COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE.

 DG>     I think that there are a full set of tools in the VC6 package
 DG> (with the latest update from MS).  I am sure that I will be able
 DG> to do the port, it's just going to be a bit more work than I
 DG> anticipated.

Right - you'll need to redo the text output.  Good luck.  :-)


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