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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu
From: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe,2847,)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: How do you read keystrokes in A
Message-ID: <5549@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 21 May 89 20:36:48 GMT
References: <124000045@inmet>
Sender: news@hubcap.clemson.edu
Reply-To: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

>From article <124000045@inmet>, by stt@inmet:
> Unix systems generally provide "signals" for
> the Interrupt and Quit keys (often "^C" and "^\").
> Getting a signal on any key is tougher.
> For the purposes of the original question, "raw" or "cbreak"
> mode would be adequate on Unix, but again, it depends
> on whether the Ada run-time-system supports
> these modes, or whether the user wants to "roll their own"
> input routines (presumably using pragma Interface).

     This is an area in which a "secondary standard" 
     (maybe even a new predefined package!) is badly needed.

     There should be some means whereby the application writer
     can, in a straightforward and machine-independent way,
     either call some function which will return an object whose
     state will indicate which key was pressed (note: this is NOT
     the same as returning ESC and then returning some other 
     character(s) on succeeding calls, the entire sequence of which
     represents an arrow key or something of that nature...), or
     establish a task entry which will be called when the next keystroke
     occurs, with a similarly "high-level" interface.  This will probably
     require a larger carrier space than CHARACTER provides (unless 9X
     upgrades CHARACTER to ISO Latin 1 (aka 8-bit ASCII)), but it's 
     something which definitely needs to be built up to an appropriate 
     level of abstraction.


     Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu