[Info-vax] Screen management in C

[Craig A. Berry]

On 12/27/24 9:17 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 12/27/2024 9:24 AM, David Meyer wrote:
>> If I want to do screen management in a C program on OpenVMS, is it
>> better to use one of the curses packages in the C run-time library, or
>> the SMG$ run-time library? If the latter, is there any documentation on
>> how to call SMG$ routines from C?
> 
> If you do not have any existing code using curses or personal
> experience with curses, then I would suggest SMG$.
> 
> There is an entire manual about SMG$:
> 
> https://docs.vmssoftware.com/vsi-openvms-rtl-screen-management-smg-manual/
> 
> There is a C header file with prototypes:
> 
> #include <smg$routines.h>
> 
> Because SMG$ are supporting Pascal/Basic/Cobol/Fortran then
> many arguments are pass by descriptor and you will need to setup
> those in C, so some familiarity with descriptors will be required.

This has been discussed previously here:

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms/c/ufBEqvGdglU

That discussion has pointers to various examples, and Neil Rieck has
another example:

https://neilrieck.net/demo_vms_html/vt_smg_demo_c.html