I have been writing an ncurses campfire client hobostove and recently gave a presentation on using Ncurses and Ruby.

Hobostove uses the ncurses-ruby gem. It’s pretty old but so is Ncurses. Here I’ll give the basics of setting up, refreshing, and tearing down. I’ll do a panel usage post later.

Initialization

Ncurses.initscr
Ncurses.cbreak
Ncurses.noecho

• Ncurses.initscr - sets up Ncurses
• Ncurses.cbreak - don’t wait for a new line to send characters to Ncurses.getch
• Ncurses.noecho - don’t echo typed characters to the screen

Update

Ncurses.doupdate
Ncurses.refresh

• Ncurses.doupdate - compares the virtual screen to the physical screen and updates accordingly
• Ncurses.refresh - writes to the terminal

Tear down

Ncurses.echo
Ncurses.endwin

• Ncurses.echo - echos characters back to the screen
• Ncurses.endwin - stops ncurses

Resources

1. TLDP Ncurses How To