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I create 3 windows on top of the standard screen, with screen-width columns and one row height with:

WINDOW* pWindow = newwin(0, COLS - 1, windowNr, 0); // windowNr 0 - 2

Which renders normally as consequitive windows:

----------------------------0 Window----------------------------
----------------------------1 Window----------------------------
----------------------------2 Window----------------------------

My problem is under the last created window I want a pad which I create with:

WINDOW* pPad = newpad(LINES - 3, COLS - 1); // 3 because of the three pWindows

But pad is rendered above all pWindows:

----------------------------0 Pad----------------------------
----------------------------0 Pad----------------------------
----------------------------0 Pad----------------------------

How can I position the pad below the last window that the output is:

----------------------------0 Window----------------------------
----------------------------1 Window----------------------------
----------------------------2 Window----------------------------
------------------------------0 Pad-----------------------------
------------------------------0 Pad-----------------------------
------------------------------0 Pad-----------------------------

The newpad has unfortunately no (y,x) cooridnates as newwin has. To simply fill the pad with debug content I do:

werase(pPad); // Clear window, https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_clear.3x.html
wmove(pPad, 0, 0); // Moves cursor in pad to y,x

for(int c = 0; c < 40; c++){
    string s = to_string(c) + ".\n";
    wprintw(pPad, s.c_str());
}

prefresh(pPad, 0, 0, 0, 0, maxRows, maxCols);

I also put different values in prefresh, its viewport scrolling or rather refreshing works perfectly as described in the documentation.

ManuelTS
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  • You could try `subpad` (in a window) rather than `newpad`. – Thomas Dickey May 27 '19 at 17:33
  • @ThomasDickey, I don't know if this is allowed or good practice as the docs https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_pad.3x.html say `The subpad routine creates and returns a pointer to a subwindow within a pad with the given number of lines, nlines, and columns, ncols.` **within a pad** makes me wonder. But your answer gave me a different idea, see my accepeted answer I'm about to write. – ManuelTS May 29 '19 at 05:24
  • Why the downgrading of the question? – ManuelTS Oct 06 '19 at 15:48

1 Answers1

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I keep the pad content in memory and render only one single window as:

----------------------------0 Window----------------------------
----------------------------1 Window----------------------------
----------------------------2 Window----------------------------
----------------------------3 Window----------------------------
----------------------------3 Window----------------------------
----------------------------3 Window----------------------------

This enables mimicing a pad, since in 3 Window only the viewpoint of my data is rendered as lines. Scrolling can be simulated by changeing the range or index in my data structure and rerender only one 3 Window line if a line got selected and the whole window if scroll in- or decreases the memory viewport index. This way a pad is simulaed and I avoid the different ncurses calls as prefresh, pnoutrefresh, pechochar etc. and can use only window, wrefresh, calls. As an example, a scroll down would change:

----------------------------3 Window-index 0--------------------
----------------------------3 Window-index 1--------------------
----------------------------3 Window-index 2--------------------

to 

----------------------------3 Window-index 1--------------------
----------------------------3 Window-index 2--------------------
----------------------------3 Window-index 3--------------------

and so on and so forth. In the ncurses API, windows seam to have more features, I can use all of them too instead of having possible future constraints by using pads now.

I'm sure, the author of ncurses had his reasons, but I only would have made an API of ncurses with one window type with a flag to enable pad functionality. Pads seam unneccessarly cumbersome and reduced to me.

ManuelTS
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