Cursor Escaping Issue In Text Input Pad

1 minute read | a month ago

When I was bulding a text input (text area) with curses I encountered an issue, as I was typing inside the text input, it loses focus, and focuses on a different window. Later on, I came to realise that I was refreshing the window before typing, not after typing. Changing the position of the refresh, solved that problem.

Before:


def main(stdscr):
  # .. Other code
  while True:
    pad.refresh(PAD_MOVE_Y, PAD_MOVE_X, SCREEN_PAD_LEFT, SCREEN_PAD_TOP, SCREEN_HEIGHT, SCREEN_WIDTH)
 
    # Get input from pad
    c = pad.getch()
 
    if c == ord('q'):
        break
 
    # .. Other code
 
    else:
        y_pos, x_pos = pad.getyx()
        pad.addch(c)

After:


def main(stdscr):
  # .. Other code
  while True:
 
    # Get input from pad
    c = pad.getch()
 
    if c == ord('q'):
        break
 
    # .. Other code
 
    else:
        y_pos, x_pos = pad.getyx()
        pad.addch(c)
 
    pad.refresh(PAD_MOVE_Y, PAD_MOVE_X, SCREEN_PAD_LEFT, SCREEN_PAD_TOP, SCREEN_HEIGHT, SCREEN_WIDTH)

Reference: curses ncurses ncurses man page