NAME¶

panel - panel stack extension for curses

SYNOPSIS¶

#include <panel.h>

PANEL *new_panel(WINDOW *win);

int bottom_panel(PANEL *pan);
int top_panel(PANEL *pan);
int show_panel(PANEL *pan);
void update_panels(void);
int hide_panel(PANEL *pan);

WINDOW *panel_window(const PANEL *pan);
int replace_panel(PANEL *pan, WINDOW *window);
int move_panel(PANEL *pan, int starty, int startx);
int panel_hidden(const PANEL *pan);

PANEL *panel_above(const PANEL *pan);
PANEL *panel_below(const PANEL *pan);

int set_panel_userptr(PANEL *pan, const void *ptr);
const void *panel_userptr(const PANEL *pan);

int del_panel(PANEL *pan);

/* ncurses extensions */
PANEL *ground_panel(SCREEN *sp);
PANEL *ceiling_panel(SCREEN *sp);

DESCRIPTION¶

Panels are ncurses(3NCURSES) windows with the added property of depth. Panel functions allow the use of stacked windows and ensure that the proper portions of each window and the curses stdscr window are hidden or displayed when panels are added, moved, modified, or removed. The set of currently visible panels is the stack of panels. The stdscr window is beneath all panels, and is not considered part of the stack.

A window is associated with each panel. The panel routines enable you to create, move, hide, and show panels. You can relocate a panel to any desired position in the stack.

Panel routines are a functional layer added to curses, make only high-level curses calls, and work anywhere curses does.

FUNCTIONS¶

RETURN VALUE¶

Each routine that returns a pointer returns NULL if an error occurs. Each routine that returns an int value returns OK if it executes successfully and ERR if not.

Except as noted, the pan and window parameters must be non-null. If either is null, an error is returned.

The move_panel function uses mvwin(3NCURSES), and returns an error if mvwin returns an error.

NOTES¶

The header file panel.h itself includes the header file curses.h.

PORTABILITY¶

Reasonable care has been taken to ensure compatibility with the native panel facility introduced in System V; inspection of the SVr4 manual pages suggests the programming interface never changed. The PANEL data structures are merely similar. The programmer is cautioned not to directly use PANEL fields.

The functions show_panel and top_panel are identical in this implementation, and work equally well with displayed or hidden panels. In the System V implementation, show_panel is intended for making a hidden panel visible (at the top of the stack) and top_panel is intended for making an already-visible panel move to the top of the stack. You are cautioned to use the correct function to ensure compatibility with System V panel libraries.

HISTORY¶

A panel facility was documented in SVr4.2's Character User Interface Programming document.

It is not part of X/Open Curses.

A few implementations exist:

• Systems based on SVr4 source code, such as Solaris, provide this library.
• ncurses (since version 0.6 in 1993) and PDCurses (since version 2.2 in 1995) provide a panel library whose common ancestor is a public domain implementation by Warren Tucker published in u386mon 2.20 (1990).

According to Tucker, the System V panel library was first released in SVr3.2 (1988), and his implementation helped with a port to SVr3.1 (1987).

Several developers have improved each of these; they are no longer the same as Tucker's implementation.

•

NetBSD 8 (2018) has a panel library begun by Valery Ushakov in 2015, based on the System V documentation.

AUTHORS¶

Warren Tucker <wht@n4hgf.mt-park.ga.us> originally wrote this implementation, primarily to assist in porting u386mon to systems without a native panel library.

Zeyd ben-Halim repackaged it for ncurses.

Juergen Pfeifer and Thomas E. Dickey revised and improved the library.

SEE ALSO¶

ncurses(3NCURSES), curses_variables(3NCURSES)