
Turbo Vision port to the GNU compiler (2009) - networked
http://tvision.sourceforge.net/
======
demosthenex
I just had an extended discussion on IRC the other day regarding Turbo Vision
and console applications.

I had a short project of my own I wanted to do to replace a webapp I depend
on, where the core is no more than 5 tables with a simple CRUD and a report.
Using any web stack for this is absurd, dbase or a console app would be
perfect as I prefer to work over ssh.

Imagine my dismay when I found there are virtually no options for making
console applications with any modern tools. Even the ncurses wrappers are
ignored or missing (ie: Python).

While the topic is hot, can anyone recommend an OSS or commercial application
you can still use on Linux to make fast small console apps without dropping to
C and Ncurses?

~~~
Frondo
This is a good use case for Tcl/Tk. Tcl scripting gives you database access
with a pretty modern-ish language, and Tk is a basic but decent (and totally
cross-platform) GUI scripting toolkit.

~~~
demosthenex
TUI != GUI.

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mixmastamyk
This library was awesome for a time. I had used Turbo Pascal in the early 90's
and had really liked the text gui.

When this port came out, I made my own "CUA" text mode editor on linux (really
just a streamlined feature cut from setedit) and it worked fantastically for
years. So much better than nano and other lame unix attempts at simple
editors. Anyone who had been exposed to the DOS editor would pick it up
immediately.

The problem was the library was only briefly packaged up, and early on it fell
out of whatever distro I had at the time and was never picked up again.

It's a shame because that editor would have been awesome for beginners, though
it had quite a few power features, such as syntax highlighting etc from
setedit/rhide.

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throwawayaway
Glorious pictures here:

[http://www.sigala.it/sergio/tvision/images.html](http://www.sigala.it/sergio/tvision/images.html)

~~~
dragonwriter
That's a different port (From the original article at the head of the thread,
Sergio Sigala's port [0]-- which you link to the screenshots of -- is a
different port targeting fewer platforms and with a 100% compatibility target,
while the one in the article targeted more platforms, and compromised
compatibility for security/usability improvements.)

Both ports seem to be inactive (the current version of Sigala's per its page
is the same 0.8 that was the latest version at the time of the 2009 post of
the original article), but there seems to be at least one more-recently-active
fork of Sigala's port on Github. [1]

[0]
[http://www.sigala.it/sergio/tvision/index.html](http://www.sigala.it/sergio/tvision/index.html)

[1]
[https://github.com/benwbooth/tvision](https://github.com/benwbooth/tvision)

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malkia
It can still be useful. I work more and more on the console, remoting from the
laptop to the work desktop. I love midnight-commander, mcview, and use (heh)
tig (actually a git pager) for normal pager (instead of more, less, etc.).
Along with emacs/vi/zile/mg/whatever is there. Won't mind a terminal mode
debugger with some menus in there, that reflects what Turbo Pascal Debugger
was (loved it back in the days)

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jonsen
I practically learned OOP making an application in Turbo Pascal using the
Turbo Vision library. I even bought the Pascal source code for Turbo Vision
($200 IIRC) Primarily to find a bug where when you pressed a pull down menu
item, and there was a button on the window below the menu item, the mouse
event for the menu item also triggered the button below. It turned out there
was a patch downloadable from a Borland BBS, but boy it was learning digging
through the source and finding and fixing that one inlined assembler opcode
which was wrong. Dissecting the patch one could see that it contained a
workaround, not a direct fix of the bug. Today there's a lot of open source to
learn from. Not at all common at that time.

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chajath
I have fond memories of using rhide. I wish they make a comeback as a modern
TUI ide.

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orionblastar
Turbo Vision was a library of forms and controls for Borland Turbo Languages.
You didn't need Windows to make an easy to use program. It ran in DOS.

I can see this being useful for GNU/Linux programs that run in the shell.

~~~
copperx
On the shell, we have Curses. How is Turbo Vision different?

~~~
orionblastar
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.linux.develo...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.linux.development.apps/TqYFtps_vac)

Turbo Vision gives text based menus and text based controls to make an easier
to use program in the terminal.

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grouseway
All I remember from Turbo Vision is the insane amount of brackets that were
used in the demos for building a GUI/TUI control hierarchy.

I'll take the Turbo Technojock Toolkit any day over TV if I get sent back in a
time warp.

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bitL
...and now just VCL port to GCC please!

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edgarvm
Is this project dead?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Yes, only waiting to be resurrected.

