Re: [Nmh-workers] colorized/highlighted scan output?

[Tom Lane]

Ken Hornstein <address@hidden> writes:
> - Can we use curses?  Short answer: no.

Check.

> - Can we use terminfo?  Short answer: maybe.

>   My gut feeling is that terminfo seems to be what people have converged
>   to using.  It's not apparant at first glance how you translate a terminfo
>   capability to the actual output characters, but let's assume it's
>   possible (hm, looks like what you do is tparm()/tputs()).  So that
>   would mean we'd have to add a fair number of format functions that
>   would do the various terminfo stuff, but maybe that wouldn't be so
>   bad.

I was envisioning just one function, that takes the terminfo symbolic
name of a capability and gives back the actual string.

> - Can we just stick with the original idea of outputting escape characters?

>   Well ... maybe.  The problem is the limitation of the format language.
>   For example, you can't have an argument to a function which contains
>   a ')' character.  Maybe that isn't a concern.  We might need two new
>   format functions, ones that turn "zero width" mode on and off (and
>   thus two new format instructions).

Good point.  I'm inclined to think that it's a good idea to provide this
even if we also provide the terminfo-accessing function, since there is
always going to be somebody who wants to do something that doesn't fit
into what (his) terminfo knows.

                        regards, tom lane