From memory, while you can use regular stdio functions printf
, scanf
, and gets
, the graphics driver will paint them over your screen onto a "virtual cursor" position and scroll the screen when it reaches the bottom. You can use the nonstandard conio.h
functions such as gotoxy
and attempt to position the cursor, but it's still a mediocre way of inputting text, messing up the graphics stuff. You also cannot use the fancy fonts!
So use getch
to read characters without showing them; update a string buffer (manually handling special keys such as Backspace and Return), and draw that on the screen using a font of your choice.
A short sample snippet of code to get you started:
#define MAX_INPUT_LEN 80
char inputbuf[MAX_INPUT_LEN];
int input_pos = 0;
then, in your main loop
int the_end = 0;
do
{
outtextxy (0,0, inputbuf);
c = getch();
switch (c)
{
case 8: /* backspace */
if (input_pos)
{
input_pos--;
inputbuf[input_pos] = 0;
}
break;
case 13: /* return */
the_end = 1;
break;
case 27: /* Escape = Abort */
inputbuf[0] = 0;
the_end = 1;
break;
default:
if (input_pos < MAX_INPUT_LEN-1 && c >= ' ' && c <= '~')
{
inputbuf[input_pos] = c;
input_pos++;
inputbuf[input_pos] = 0;
}
}
} while (!the_end);
Before you draw the text, make sure to erase the previous line! I left that out because it's been too long ago I used Turbo-C.