Curses and resizing windows

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  • Nick !

    #1

    Curses and resizing windows

    Chris Share <usenet at caesium.me.ukwr ote:
    I've been writing an application using curses, and have been trying to
    handle resizing the terminal, if running in xterm or similar. Increasing
    the window size is working perfectly, however shrinking it is not
    working at all. No matter how much I shrink the window, the size
    returned by getmaxyx() does not change. However as soon as I increase it
    again, it works fine.
    >
    I've tracked the problem down to the fact I have created a window
    derived from stdscr. A small script showing the effect is at the end of
    this post.
    >
    odd (thanks for the example - I don't know if this is a problem in
    ncurses or in the python interface to it, but will check/see).
    >
    Can anyone suggest how to solve this problem, that doesn't involve not
    making a derwin of stdscr?
    >
    I've been googling for hours, but found nothing to help.
    >
    Python version is 2.3.4 on debian testing.
    >
    probably should report it as a bug (so it's not overlooked).
    >
    --
    Thomas E. Dickey

    ftp://invisible-island.net
    http://web.cs.mun.ca/~rod/ncurses/ncurses.html#xterm says "The ncurses
    library does not catch [the SIGWINCH aka resizing] signal, because it
    cannot in general know how you want the screen re-painted". First, is
    this really true? When I make my xterms smaller they clip what is
    displayed--is that a function of curses or the xterm?
    Second, if true, it explains /what/ is going on--stdscr, only--, but
    isn't really satisfactory; it doesn't solve the original poster's bug.

    #!/usr/bin/env python
    """
    curses_resize.p y -run the program without hooking SIGWINCH
    curses_resize.p y 1 -run the program with hooking SIGWINCH
    """


    import sys, curses, signal, time

    def sigwinch_handle r(n, frame):
    curses.endwin()
    curses.initscr( )

    def main(stdscr):
    """just repeatedly redraw a long string to reveal the window boundaries"""
    while 1:
    stdscr.insstr(0 ,0,"abcd"*40)
    time.sleep(1)

    if __name__=='__ma in__':
    if len(sys.argv)== 2 and sys.argv[1]=="1":
    signal.signal(s ignal.SIGWINCH, sigwinch_handle r)
    curses.wrapper( main)

    If you run this without sigwinch then the line never gets resized, but
    if you do then it works fine. What we can glean from this is that
    stdscr only reads off it's size upon initialization. This behaviour
    may seem a bit strange, but 1) it's legacy and 2) avoids breaking the
    semantics of windows (which don't change size on their own).

    The "curses.initscr ()" part is kind of unhappy though. It modifies the
    stdscr variable without us explicitly assigning anything (but I can't
    think of any other way to do it, beyond making stdscr a global, and
    that feels worse) and will break if initscr() ever returns a new
    Window structure instead of just updating and returning the old one.
    Does anyone have any tips for how to structure this so that the screen
    can actually be assigned to?

    In conclusion, it's not a bug, it's a feature. Joy! The workaround is
    to write a sigwinch_handle r that at least does `endwin(); initscr()`.

    Sorry for reviving an old thread, but it doesn't seem the issue was
    ever resolved (the thread doesn't go anywhere and there's no warning
    about this in the docs that I noticed).

    (please CC: me if anyone cares, I'm not on the list)

    -Nick Guenther
  • Thomas Dickey

    #2
    Re: Curses and resizing windows

    Nick ! <kousue@gmail.c omwrote:
    http://web.cs.mun.ca/~rod/ncurses/ncurses.html#xterm says "The ncurses
    library does not catch [the SIGWINCH aka resizing] signal, because it
    cannot in general know how you want the screen re-painted". First, is
    this really true? When I make my xterms smaller they clip what is
    no - given that particular url is a file dating from 1995, it's something
    that I overlooked in making corrections here:



    But also note where I link it from:

    This FAQ gives some background and discussion for frequently encountered problems with the ncurses library, the terminal database and applications.

    displayed--is that a function of curses or the xterm?
    both - xterm sends the signal, and curses receives it.
    Second, if true, it explains /what/ is going on--stdscr, only--, but
    isn't really satisfactory; it doesn't solve the original poster's bug.
    #!/usr/bin/env python
    """
    curses_resize.p y -run the program without hooking SIGWINCH
    curses_resize.p y 1 -run the program with hooking SIGWINCH
    """
    import sys, curses, signal, time
    def sigwinch_handle r(n, frame):
    curses.endwin()
    curses.initscr( )
    Actually I'd expect to see curses.refresh( ) here - but that may be a quirk
    of the python code.

    In general, ncurses passes a KEY_RESIZE via the getch() call that the
    application (such as python) should process. If it's not reading from
    getch(), ncurses' repainting/resizing won't happen.

    Also, if you add your own signal handler, ncurses' SIGWINCH catcher won't
    work. (I'd recommend chaining the signal handlers, but don't know if
    python supports that ;-).
    def main(stdscr):
    """just repeatedly redraw a long string to reveal the window boundaries"""
    while 1:
    stdscr.insstr(0 ,0,"abcd"*40)
    time.sleep(1)
    if __name__=='__ma in__':
    if len(sys.argv)== 2 and sys.argv[1]=="1":
    signal.signal(s ignal.SIGWINCH, sigwinch_handle r)
    curses.wrapper( main)
    --
    Thomas E. Dickey

    ftp://invisible-island.net

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