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Simple text-mode window library for DOS?

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First post, by TheMobRules

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Lately I've been playing around with DOS programming after a long long time so I'm trying to get back in the loop with a few projects.

I've been looking for a C library that allows me to do some basic text-mode UI stuff such as creating windows, displaying text in them, that sort of stuff, nothing fancy. I have found several candidates in old shareware bundles, but being shareware they usually impose some sort of limitation (such as the memory model to use when linking) that makes them annoying to use. Full registered versions are obviously almost impossible to find nowadays so I ended up discarding all of those.

I also thought of going the route of Borland TurboVision, but I'd prefer something lighter/simpler and that doesn't restrict me to C++ (yuck) or Turbo Pascal.

I'm open to suggestions if anyone here has something to recommend. Worst case scenario I'll do it myself from scratch, but I don't really want to spend a lot of time in that when I can use something that is already more mature and polished.

Reply 2 of 9, by Jo22

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I don't know about C, but there's a lot of stuff like this available for QuickBasic 4.5. 😉

For making windows, "WINGUI" could be used, I think.
https://qb45.org/files.php?cat=11&p=1

In fact, there's even a DirectX "clone" called "DirectQB".. 😁
http://www.antonis.de/qbdown/qblibs.htm#dqb

.. and a game engine named "UGL".

Edit: Visual Basic for DOS (VBDOS) has a TUI designer built-in..

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 3 of 9, by BloodyCactus

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DFLat was written in C, its the only other one I know off. several githubs for it.

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--

Reply 4 of 9, by TheMobRules

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Thanks for all the suggestions.

I do have VBDOS, but I had no luck trying to find the reference docs, which makes it difficult to do certain things I would need, like calling external libraries compiled with non-Microsoft tools.

I'm going to try and find DFlat then.

Reply 5 of 9, by BloodyCactus

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i just built it from github, it compiles against borland c 3.1, if you want the zip let me know

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--

Reply 6 of 9, by TheMobRules

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I also found it in a Github repo and compiled with BC3.1 myself, but thanks anyway! Based on the sample MEMOPAD app that comes with the library it looks really promising, so this weekend I'll see what else it can do.

Thanks again.

Reply 8 of 9, by Jo22

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http://ftpmirror.your.org/pub/misc/dos/RbbsIn … BS/CDMASTER.DIR

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

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