cdk_cdk3

Usage

Overview

Cdk is a library of functions which allow a programmer to quickly create a full screen interactive program with ease. The Cdk widgets support the following features:

• Ncurses library.

Instead of using the standard curses library, Cdk can take advantage of the colors that Ncurses provides. To learn how to take advantage of Cdk's color capabilities, read the cdk_display manual page.

• Key Bindings.

Individual keys can be overridden with a call-back. The call-back is set up using the bindCDKObject function. To learn more about this read the cdk_binding manual page.

• Pre and Post Processing.

Certain widgets allow the user to trap a character before and after the character has been applied to the widget. This allows programmers to 'filter' character input. To learn more about this read the cdk_process manual page.

• Self Test Widgets.

With the use of the inject function class and the activate function, programmers can have the widgets test themselves. This allows the programmer to perform automated tests on a final program.

• Special Display Formats

There are special character format commands that can be inserted into any string in Cdk and the contents will get mapped to a chtype (see the curses manual page) with character attributes. This allows the programmer to insert format types on each character if they wish.

• The Ability To Build Predefined Screens

Widgets can be associated to any given screen. If there is more than one screen defined, then Cdk has the ability to "flip" from one screen to another with ease. See the cdk_screen manual page for more details.

Standard widget behavior

All of the widgets have a member of the structure called exitType. This member states how the widget exited. There are three values in which to check for, they are as follows:

Value            Meaning
vNORMAL          This means the widget exited normally. This 
                 value is set when the widget is given the 
                 characters TAB or RETURN.
vEARLY_EXIT      This means the widget exited early. This value
                 is set when characters are injected into the 
                 widget via the injectCDKXXX function and the 
                 character injected does not exit the widget.
                 (ie: TAB or RETURN)
vESCAPE_HIT      This value states the user hit ESCAPE to 
                 leave the widget.
vNEVER_ACTIVATED This is the initial state of the value. This 
                 means that the widget has not been activated.

Notes

The header file <cdk.h> automatically includes the header files <curses.h>, <stdlib.h>, <string.h>, <ctype.h>, <unistd.h>, <dirent.h>, <time.h>, <errno.h>, <pwd.h>, <grp.h>, <sys/stat.h>, and <sys/types.h>. The <curses.h> header file includes <stdio.h> and <unctrl.h>.

If you have Ncurses installed on your machine add -DNCURSES to the compile line to include the Ncurses header files instead.