8.5 Windows

Windows can be created, deleted, moved, copied, touched, duplicated and more.

• WINDOW *newwin(nlines, ncols, begy, begx)  
  begy and begx are the window coordinates of the upper left corner. nlines is an integer with the number of lines and ncols is an integer with the number of columns.

    
  Figure 8.1: Ncurses - scheme for newwin
  

  The upper left corner of our window is in line 10 and column 10 and the window has 10 lines and 60 columns. If nlines is zero, the window will have LINES-begy rows. In the same way the, window will have COLS-begx columns when ncols is zero.

  When you call newwin(...) with all argument zero:

  the opened window will have the size of the screen.

  With and we can open windows in the middle of the screen, whatever dimension it has:

  This will open a window with 22 lines and 70 rows in the middle of the screen. Check the screen size before opening windows. In the Linux console we have 25 or more lines and 80 or more columns, but in xterms this may not be the case (they're resizable).

  Alternatively, use and to adapt two windows to the screen size:

  See .c in the example directory for more explanations.

• int delwin(win)  
  Delete the window win. When there are subwindows delete them before win. It will free up all resources occupied by win. Delete all windows you have opened before calling endwin().
• int mvwin(win, by, bx)  
  Will move a window to the coordinates by,bx. If this means moving the window beyond the edges of the screen, nothing is done, and ERR is returned.
• WINDOW *subwin(origwin, nlines, ncols, begy, begx)  
  Returns a subwindow in the middle of origwin. When you change one of the two windows (origwin or the new one) this change will be reflected in both windows. Call touchwin(origwin) before the next refresh().

  begx and begy are relative to the screen, not to origwin.

• WINDOW *derwin(origwin, nlines, ncols, begy, begx)  
  The same as subwin(...) except that begx and begy are relative to the window origwin than to the screen.
• int mvderwin(win, y, x)  
  Will move win inside its parent window. (Note: not implemented yet.)
• WINDOW *dupwin(win)  
  Duplicate the window win.
• int syncok(win, bf)  
  void wsyncup(win)  
  void wcursyncup(win)  
  void wsyncdown(win)  
  (Note: not implemented yet.)
• int overlay(win1, win2)  
  int overwrite(win1, win2)  
  overlay(...) will copy all text from win1 to win2 without copying blanks. overwrite(...) does the same, but copies blanks, too.
• int copywin(win1, win2, sminrow, smincol, dminrow, dmincol,
  dmaxrow, dmaxcol, overlay)  
  Similar to overlay(...) and overwrite(...), but provides control over what region of the window to copy.