I'm currently in the process of planning out a custom Vim-like editor. It's going to be written in C and I want it to be as portable as possible between as many types of systems as possible.
I'm aware of curses (ncurses, I suppose), the tput command, and how terminals use control sequence (Esc-[ and the CSI character) to change backgrounds, move the cursor, etc.
Of the options above, it seems like ncurses would be the most recommended way of printing for the editor. BUT ncurses also has a LOT of stuff that I rather wouldn't use, and if it's reasonably feasible I'd rather make my own system. I'm not against using it, but .. anyways.
So, my question is: Is there any way to use control sequences in the vast majority of terminals without using a library? Whether through tput or another method?
Thanks!
tput(1) uses the terminfo(5) (or older termcap(5)) database, which provides the mapping from abstract commands such as move cursor to x,y to escape sequences for different terminals. When you run a command such as
$ tput cup 10 3 # move cursor to row/column 10/3
, the terminfo database is queried to find the correct string for your terminal, which is then simply written to stdout. To find the available commands (e.g., cup), look at the cap-name column in terminfo(5). tput determines what terminal you are using by looking at the TERM environment variable.
(This means that you can check what escape characters are being generated by simply doing $ tput [command] > [file] and opening [file] in some editor that can show control characters, which can be handy for exploration. The infocmp(1) command can also be used for this.)
If you use tput (or the underlying tputs(3)), your program is hence automatically portable to different terminals. This is what Vim uses by the way.
However -- in the modern world, pretty much all terminals (or terminal emulators rather) use ANSI escape codes, along with some extensions (see XTerm Control Sequences). I believe the escapes supported by xterm and their behavior have become something of a de facto standard at this point, with other terminal emulators simply copying xterm's behavior. Some text-based UI libraries like termbox seem to do away with support for non-ANSI terminals altogether, and output ANSI escapes directly.
Besides the already-mentioned termbox, there's also S-Lang, which includes a terminal handling component. I believe those are the two most popular "ncurses replacements". I'd give ncurses some time first though.