Figure out CPP/Keyboard input interface

[PayneTrain]

Initial research shows that its very unfriendly/system dependent with Linux but that 'ncurses' package is the best way to go so I have downloaded it and am playing around with it

[PayneTrain]

Installed v5 of the ncurses dev kit, issues with including ncurses.h in a helloworld style program, appears get-apt did not place links in usr/lib so looking into that. It looks like getchar() will provide nice functionality for key based commands (press and hold W for robot to walk straight, double tap to increase speed, etc)

[PayneTrain]

Finally got a HelloWorld.cpp test program to compile using the -lncurses flag at the _end_ of the link command, terminal does not work with Eclipse so must be used in cmd terminal. Using getch() and keypad modifiers can get arrow key functionality (this is good for an application that waits for continuous input (pressing UP_ARROW) to move the car forward for the duration of the press (mod one leg period) ~ 2sec for the slowest)

[PayneTrain]

Compiling ncurses-5.9 for 32bit to be compatible with EPOS library, use this

Opened up this issue with StackOverflow

[hmartiro]

i just did sudo apt-get install ncurses-dev and it worked for me just fine. I just added #include <ncurses.h> and ncurses to the library include for the compiler. I made a print wrapper for ncurses and got the keypresses working. This is what I use to initialize:

initscr(); noecho(); cbreak(); keypad(stdscr, TRUE); nodelay(stdscr, TRUE); scrollok(stdscr, TRUE);

The nodelay call makes it so that getch() doesn't wait for input, but returns -1 if nothing is pressed. This works fine, but I think at this point we need to make a decision.

1. Continue with C++ using ncurses, establishing high level control flow with the keyboard. If we need to make a graphical application, QT is our best bet.
2. Create our own shared library libxJus.so and start using Python to call that library using a binding like Boost.python or ctypes. ncurses will be replaced with a Python package, and we can use a Python GUI toolkit.

The advantages of switching over are

• Python is just way better to program with, shorter code, etc
• Interpreted, so we can call functions directly from the command line without writing programs
• Reuse simulation code for high-level routines

Disadvantages

• Need to create a shared library that has all the functions we will need
• Figure out ctypes or Boost.python to make calls to the c++ library

I just don't want to keep making stuff for C++ only to decide to switch over later cause it's just too annoying. We should make a decision and work with that.

[PayneTrain]

Hmm, I could only get the 64b working, not the 32b but cool!

[hmartiro]

my linux is 32-bit so that's probably why

[hmartiro]

We can forget about ncurses, look at #73