mirror of
https://github.com/MidnightCommander/mc
synced 2024-12-23 21:06:52 +03:00
121 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
121 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
-*-outline-*-
|
|
|
|
This is the developers' hint guide.
|
|
Some parts are based on mail messages.
|
|
|
|
Please feel free to add your name to this list:
|
|
by Miguel de Icaza
|
|
|
|
* Working with the Midnight Commander
|
|
|
|
If you plan on working on the Midnight Commander, here are some
|
|
tips on how to make your development easier and my job of merging
|
|
your code easier, I find them useful.
|
|
|
|
o Run make depend if you modify the source code structure (e.g. you
|
|
add/remove include files). This is very important, it will help you
|
|
to get an accurate compilation.
|
|
|
|
o It's recommended that you use GNU Make (if you want to use the
|
|
depend feature).
|
|
|
|
o I work with the tags feature of GNU emacs. Run the make tags
|
|
command to get an updated TAGS file. The command Alt-. will take
|
|
you to any function or variable definition.
|
|
|
|
o Try to keep the indenting style as it is currently. Normally if you
|
|
just created a new file with a different coding style, run the GNU
|
|
indent program on it (remember to make a backup copy first) like
|
|
this: indent -kr -pcs filename.c
|
|
|
|
o This code is distributed under the GNU General Public License and
|
|
Keep this in mind when adding code to the program.
|
|
|
|
* Code structure.
|
|
|
|
The program uses extensively the dialog manager written by Radek
|
|
Doulik. To understand how the dialog manager works, please read
|
|
the dlg.c and dlg.h. You will find the basic widgets in the file
|
|
widget.c and the widget.h file. If you understand this two files,
|
|
you are done. The files option.c and boxes.c contain some examples
|
|
of how the dialog manager functions are used. For a more complete
|
|
example, take a look at the main.c file.
|
|
|
|
The file util.c has a lot of utility functions. Get familiar with
|
|
them, they are very simple.
|
|
|
|
The code has almost no hardcoded limits, there are a lot of ways of
|
|
avoiding them. For example, when you want to concatenate strings,
|
|
use the copy_strings functions, it is used like this:
|
|
|
|
new_text = copy_strings (username, " ", password, NULL);
|
|
|
|
This mallocs the required area, so it still needs to be freed.
|
|
|
|
* Upcoming changes.
|
|
|
|
* Panels
|
|
|
|
* Input handling
|
|
|
|
The routines for input handling on the Midnight Commander are:
|
|
xgetch, get_key_code, mi_getch and get_event.
|
|
|
|
xgetch is an interface to the low level system input mechanism. It
|
|
does not deal with the mouse.
|
|
|
|
In the case of curses, this is a macro that translates to getch, on
|
|
BSD curses, it is an interface to x_getch. This routine on curses
|
|
translates key sequences to key codes (\E[A to something like
|
|
KEY_UP or whatever).
|
|
|
|
In the case of slang there is no such conversion, that's why we
|
|
load a set of extra definitions.
|
|
|
|
The get_key_code routine converts the data from xgetch to the
|
|
constants the Midnight Commander uses.
|
|
|
|
In the case of slang, it will actually do all the jobs that getch
|
|
does for curses. In the case of curses it patches a couple of
|
|
sequences that are not available on some terminal databases. This
|
|
routine is the one you want to use if you want a character without
|
|
the mouse support.
|
|
|
|
get_event is the routine you want to use if you want to handle mouse
|
|
events, it will return 0 on a mouse event, ERR if no input is
|
|
available or a key code if there is some input available. This
|
|
routine in turn uses get_key_code to decode the input stream and
|
|
convert it to useful constants.
|
|
|
|
mi_getch is just a wrapper around get_event that ignores all the mouse
|
|
events. It's used only in a couple of places, this routine may return
|
|
ERR if no input is available (if you have set the nodelay option of
|
|
curses or slang with nodelay) or a character code if no such option is
|
|
available.
|
|
|
|
* Mouse support.
|
|
|
|
The mouse support in the Midnight Commander is based on the get_event
|
|
routine. The core of the mouse event dispatching is in the
|
|
dlg.c:run_dlg routine.
|
|
|
|
* ncurses
|
|
|
|
We are dropping it in favor of slang, but we will still support it. We
|
|
basically are using a small subset of ncurses because we want to be
|
|
compatible with Slang.
|
|
|
|
|
|
* The Dialog manager and the Widgets
|
|
|
|
** Button widget
|
|
|
|
** Check box widget
|
|
|
|
** Radio widget
|
|
|
|
** Input widget
|
|
|
|
** Listbox widget
|
|
|