| 1 | /* $Id: libcaca.dox 823 2006-04-21 16:27:43Z sam $ */ |
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| 2 | |
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| 3 | /** \mainpage libcaca Developer Documentation |
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| 4 | |
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| 5 | \section intro Introduction |
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| 6 | |
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| 7 | \e libcaca is a graphics library that outputs text instead of pixels, |
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| 8 | so that it can work on older video cards or text terminals. It is not |
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| 9 | unlike the famous AAlib library. \e libcaca can use almost any virtual |
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| 10 | terminal to work, thus it should work on all Unix systems (including |
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| 11 | Mac OS X) using either the slang library or the ncurses library, on DOS |
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| 12 | using the conio library, and on Windows systems using either slang or |
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| 13 | ncurses (through Cygwin emulation) or conio. There is also a native X11 |
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| 14 | driver, and an OpenGL driver (through freeglut) that does not require a |
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| 15 | text terminal. For machines without a screen, the raw driver can be used |
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| 16 | to send the output to another machine, using for instance cacaserver. |
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| 17 | |
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| 18 | \e libcaca is free software, released under the Do What The Fuck You |
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| 19 | Want To Public License. This ensures that no one, not even the \e libcaca |
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| 20 | developers, will ever have anything to say about what you do with the |
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| 21 | software. It used to be licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public |
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| 22 | License, but that was not free enough. |
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| 23 | |
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| 24 | \section api The libcaca API |
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| 25 | |
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| 26 | \e libcaca relies on a low-level, device independent library, called |
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| 27 | \e libcucul. \e libcucul can be used alone as a simple ASCII and/or |
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| 28 | Unicode compositing canvas. |
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| 29 | |
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| 30 | The complete \e libcucul and \e libcaca programming interface is |
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| 31 | available from the cucul.h and caca.h headers. |
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| 32 | |
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| 33 | \section env Environment variables |
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| 34 | |
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| 35 | Some environment variables can be used to change the behaviour of |
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| 36 | \e libcaca without having to modify the program which uses them. These |
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| 37 | variables are: |
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| 38 | |
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| 39 | \li \b CACA_DRIVER: set the backend video driver. In order of preference: |
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| 40 | - \c conio uses the DOS conio.h interface. |
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| 41 | - \c ncurses uses the ncurses library. |
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| 42 | - \c slang uses the S-Lang library. |
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| 43 | - \c x11 uses the native X11 driver. |
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| 44 | - \c gl uses freeglut and opengl libraries. |
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| 45 | - \c raw outputs to the standard output instead of rendering the |
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| 46 | canvas. This is can be used together with cacaserver. |
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| 47 | |
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| 48 | \li \b CACA_GEOMETRY: set the video display size. The format of this |
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| 49 | variable must be XxY, with X and Y being integer values. This option |
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| 50 | currently works with the network, X11 and GL drivers. |
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| 51 | |
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| 52 | \li \b CACA_FONT: set the rendered font. The format of this variable is |
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| 53 | implementation dependent, but since it currently only works with the |
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| 54 | X11 driver, an X11 font name such as "fixed" or "5x7" is expected. |
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| 55 | |
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| 56 | \section Misc |
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| 57 | |
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| 58 | - \subpage news |
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| 59 | - \subpage authors |
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| 60 | - \subpage thanks |
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| 61 | - \subpage todo |
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| 62 | |
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| 63 | */ |
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