Improved display of boxing characters using UTF8 box drawing characters

[m-bob]

Hi,

I apologize for the incomplete nature of this post, but I thought it might be helpful as-is and I don't know when I'll be able to improve it further.

I tried a number of ways to get QNial to use the UTF8 box drawing characters none of which worked. The "right" way to do it appears to involve a lot of effort to rewrite routines in the file picture.c .

But there's a very easy work-around that accomplishes the same thing with little effort. The key idea is simply for QNial to use the IBM box-drawing characters until "the last moment" and then replace them with the equivalent UTF8 characters just before output.

The changes needed are as follows. First, one needs to modify main_stu.c by adding the import

include

and then placing the line setlocale (LC_ALL, ""); somewhere in main(). One should also tell QNial to use the IBM characters by changing the argument of the initboxchars () call to true: initboxchars (true);

Next, one needs to modify the file unixif.c . First, add the imports

include

include "picture.h"

Second, before any executable code, insert unsigned char ibm_boxing_chars [] = {ibm_luc, ibm_ruc, ibm_llc, ibm_rlc, ibm_ut, ibm_lt, ibm_rt, ibm_gt, ibm_cro, ibm_hor, ibm_ver}; short int u8_boxing_chars [] = {u'┌', u'┐', u'└', u'┘', u'┬', u'┴', u'┤', u'├', u'┼', u'─', u'│'};

The code looks for the characters in the array ibm_boxing_chars [] and replaces them with the corresponding characters in u8_boxing_chars [] .

Third, I used this simple function to find the characters to change:

int find_index (int c, unsigned char array [], int n) { for (int index = 0; index < n; ++index) { if (c == (int) array [index]) return index; } return -1; } Place that code wherever you like.

Fourth, and finally, change the routine writechars (). Here's my routine:

nialint writechars(FILE file, char buf, nialint n, int nlflag) { static int calls = 0; / internal counter used for breakchecking / if (keeplog && (file == stdout)) writelog(buf, n, nlflag);

/ every 25 calls check for a signal (approx one screen full) / if (++calls > 25) { calls = 0; checksignal(NC_CS_OUTPUT); } { int i; // for (i = 0; i < n; i++) // putc (buf[i], file); for (i = 0; i < n; i++) { int k = (int) (unsigned char) buf [i]; int index = find_index (k, ibm_boxing_chars, 11); if (index == -1) putc (buf [i], file); else putwc (u8_boxing_chars [index], file); } if (nlflag) putc('\n', file); fflush(file); } return (n); }

The only change is that the single call to putc () in the body of the output for loop is replaced with four lines of code and the surrounding braces. Everything else remains the same.

I haven't extensively tested this code (and certainly not with file output set to anything other than STDOUT), but it works in the cases I tried.

I hope this helps someone!

A nice thing about this approach is that it doesn't constrain the choice of terminal font: any fixed-width font which contains the UTF8 drawing characters can be used. I'm using this code on a Mac and do not need an IBM-specific font.

I haven't tried to determine the level of QNial support for unicode. Certainly full unicode support would be nice, and would likely make this work-around irrelevant.

[gibbonsja]

Thanks for taking the time and contributing this nice work, I will add it to the distribution and do some testing.

I will initially add a command line flag (-bc) to give users control of the feature.

John

[m-bob]

Yay! You're welcome. I'm glad you like it. I know it's not a big deal, but I like the output better this way.

On an entirely different note, I'm still trying to get the audio library working. I've had limited success so far. The SFML documentation suggests that there are two "interfaces" to sounds in the library: "music" and "sound".

The music interface, at least for playing, is simpler:

M := nsfml_music_from_file "name_of_sound_file.wav nsfml_play M

plays the sound file, as expected.

The "sound" interface is similar, but a little more complicated.

You can create a sound buffer from a file: Buffer := nsfml_soundbuffer_from_file "name_of_sound_file.wav

and write that buffer back to a file: nsfml_soundbuffer_to_file "existing.wav "new.wav

You can create a "sound" object, assign a Buffer to it, and play it:

Sound := nsfml_create_sound 0 nsfml_sound_set_buffer Sound Buffer nsfml_play Sound

The call to nsfml_create_sound wants an argument. I used '0' and it works, but I don't know what it's for.

My major curiosity is understanding samples. The sound buffer objects appear to be essentially opaque, except that you can get samples out.

Samples := nsfml_get_samples Buffer

AFAICT, the Samples array has the right number of values, but the values print out as odd characters. I don't know how to interpret or use them. That's where I'm at with the library.

Again, thanks so much for your work in getting QNial working, and I'm glad you find my very minor contribution helpful.

On Sun, Sep 12, 2021 at 12:35 AM gibbonsja @.***> wrote:

Thanks for taking the time and contributing this nice work, I will add it to the distribution and do some testing.

I will initially add a command line flag (-bc) to give users control of the feature.

John

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[m-bob]

Hi John,

Sorry to say, I previously didn't understand the value of the "V7 QNial Dictionary.html" file!

Using it, I found the function 'charrep', and, continuing the earlier discussion about the audio library, the expression

charrep Samples

returns something that looks sensible. So, while I don't understand everything, the audio library looks more and more useful.

BTW, for other Mac users, the following may be helpful in installing the audio library. You need to have the SFML library installed. You can install that library using brew. brew provides both a 'C' and a 'C++' interface to the library. QNial requires the 'C' interface. On my machine, I used the following environment variables to access it:

export NIAL_SFML_INCLUDE=/usr/local/Cellar/csfml/2.5.1/include export NIAL_SFML_LIB=/usr/local/Cellar/csfml/2.5.1/lib

You need to set these variables before running cmake.

On Sun, Sep 12, 2021 at 12:35 AM gibbonsja @.***> wrote:

Thanks for taking the time and contributing this nice work, I will add it to the distribution and do some testing.

I will initially add a command line flag (-bc) to give users control of the feature.

John

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/danlm/QNial7/issues/8#issuecomment-917568353, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AHJLAMVQGFO65IN5EPXTWGDUBRCZNANCNFSM5DX7V5GA . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675 or Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub.

[gibbonsja]

Hi,

Samples are really 16 bit integers, 2 bytes per sample. The sound buffer defines the number of channels, the sample rate for playing and the number of samples. The samples are packed into the sound buffer with the samples for each channel together.

Ignore the 0 argument. I made it a function, which requires arguments, but it probably should have been and expressino Hope this helps.

John

[m-bob]

That makes sense.

On Sun, Sep 12, 2021 at 4:49 PM gibbonsja @.***> wrote:

Hi,

Samples are really 16 bit integers, 2 bytes per sample. The sound buffer defines the number of channels, the sample rate for playing and the number of samples. The samples are packed into the sound buffer with the samples for each channel together.

Ignore the 0 argument. I made it a function, which requires arguments, but it probably should have been and expressino Hope this helps.

John

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[gibbonsja]

My last message was ambiguous. The order of samples for two channels is

Channel 1, sample1 Channel 2, sample1 Channel 1, sample2 Etc

On Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 11:49 m-bob @.***> wrote:

That makes sense.

On Sun, Sep 12, 2021 at 4:49 PM gibbonsja @.***> wrote:

Hi,

Samples are really 16 bit integers, 2 bytes per sample. The sound buffer defines the number of channels, the sample rate for playing and the number of samples. The samples are packed into the sound buffer with the samples for each channel together.

Ignore the 0 argument. I made it a function, which requires arguments, but it probably should have been and expressino Hope this helps.

John

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[gibbonsja]

I have put the sound library created by Stu Smith up on Nial Libraries.

[m-bob]

Thanks so much! It'll be awhile before I can check it out, but I expect it'll be useful. And fun.