Outcurses

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The Ncurses [https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-intro.html#panels panels] extension (originating in AT&T System V) facilitates management of a <i>deck</i> of possibly-overlapping window objects sharing a screen (there's little point in using panels if windows are strictly tiled among the screen, but not much reason not to, either). The various panels of a screen have a z-ordering, and higher panels obscure panels underneath. Using the panels extension requires linking in the extra library libpanel (or libpanelw for wide character support).

The panelreel is a UI abstraction supported by outcurses in which dynamically-created and -destroyed toplevel entities (referred to as tablets) are arranged in a torus (circular loop), allowing for infinite scrolling (infinite scrolling can be disabled, resulting in a line segment rather than a torus). This works naturally with keyboard navigation, mouse scrolling wheels, and touchpads (including the capacitive touchscreens of modern cell phones). The "panel" comes from the underlying ncurses objects (each entity corresponds to a single panel) and the "reel" from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine slot machines]. A panelreel initially has no tablets; at any given time thereafter, it has zero or more tablets, and if there is at least one tablet, one tablet is focused (and on-screen). If the last tablet is removed, no tablet is focused. A tablet can support navigation within the tablet, in which case there is an in-tablet focus for the focused tablet, which can also move among elements within the tablet.

The panelreel is a UI abstraction supported by outcurses in which dynamically-created and -destroyed toplevel entities (referred to as tablets) are arranged in a torus (circular loop), allowing for infinite scrolling (infinite scrolling can be disabled, resulting in a line segment rather than a torus). This works naturally with keyboard navigation, mouse scrolling wheels, trackballs, and touchpads (including the capacitive touchscreens of modern cell phones). The "panel" comes from the underlying ncurses objects (each entity corresponds to a single panel) and the "reel" from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine slot machines]. A panelreel initially has no tablets; at any given time thereafter, it has zero or more tablets, and if there is at least one tablet, one tablet is focused (and on-screen). If the last tablet is removed, no tablet is focused. A tablet can support navigation within the tablet, in which case there is an in-tablet focus for the focused tablet, which can also move among elements within the tablet.

The panelreel object tracks the size of the screen, the size, number, information depth, and order of tablets, and the focuses. It also draws the optional borders around tablets and the optional border of the reel itself. It knows nothing about the actual content of a tablet, save the number of lines it occupies at each information depth. The typical control flow is that an application receives events (from the UI or other event sources), and calls into outcurses saying e.g. "Tablet 2 now has 40 valid lines of information". Outcurses might then call back into the application, asking it to draw some line(s) from some tablet(s) at some particular coordinate of that tablet's panel. Finally, control returns to the application, and the cycle starts anew.

Outcurses: Difference between revisions

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 The Ncurses [https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-intro.html#panels panels] extension (originating in AT&T System V) facilitates management of a <i>deck</i> of possibly-overlapping window objects sharing a screen (there's little point in using panels if windows are strictly tiled among the screen, but not much reason not to, either). The various panels of a screen have a z-ordering, and higher panels obscure panels underneath. Using the panels extension requires linking in the extra library libpanel (or libpanelw for wide character support).
-The panelreel is a UI abstraction supported by outcurses in which dynamically-created and -destroyed toplevel entities (referred to as tablets) are arranged in a torus (circular loop), allowing for infinite scrolling (infinite scrolling can be disabled, resulting in a line segment rather than a torus). This works naturally with keyboard navigation, mouse scrolling wheels, and touchpads (including the capacitive touchscreens of modern cell phones). The "panel" comes from the underlying ncurses objects (each entity corresponds to a single panel) and the "reel" from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine slot machines]. A panelreel initially has no tablets; at any given time thereafter, it has zero or more tablets, and if there is at least one tablet, one tablet is focused (and on-screen). If the last tablet is removed, no tablet is focused. A tablet can support navigation within the tablet, in which case there is an in-tablet focus for the focused tablet, which can also move among elements within the tablet.
+The panelreel is a UI abstraction supported by outcurses in which dynamically-created and -destroyed toplevel entities (referred to as tablets) are arranged in a torus (circular loop), allowing for infinite scrolling (infinite scrolling can be disabled, resulting in a line segment rather than a torus). This works naturally with keyboard navigation, mouse scrolling wheels, trackballs, and touchpads (including the capacitive touchscreens of modern cell phones). The "panel" comes from the underlying ncurses objects (each entity corresponds to a single panel) and the "reel" from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine slot machines]. A panelreel initially has no tablets; at any given time thereafter, it has zero or more tablets, and if there is at least one tablet, one tablet is focused (and on-screen). If the last tablet is removed, no tablet is focused. A tablet can support navigation within the tablet, in which case there is an in-tablet focus for the focused tablet, which can also move among elements within the tablet.
 The panelreel object tracks the size of the screen, the size, number, information depth, and order of tablets, and the focuses. It also draws the optional borders around tablets and the optional border of the reel itself. It knows nothing about the actual content of a tablet, save the number of lines it occupies at each information depth. The typical control flow is that an application receives events (from the UI or other event sources), and calls into outcurses saying e.g. "Tablet 2 now has 40 valid lines of information". Outcurses might then call back into the application, asking it to draw some line(s) from some tablet(s) at some particular coordinate of that tablet's panel. Finally, control returns to the application, and the cycle starts anew.