Hi, I need the functionality provided with man graphic APIs, like SDL and OpenGL, in which one waits for events from the keyboard and is able to check the status of some particular key with something like KEY_UP or KEY_DOWN.

I won't be needing a graphical window. I just need to write a program which will be used to control a mobile robot (over a radio link) using the arrow keys in the keyboard in the fashion of car driving games (need for speed, colin mcrae). Is there a simple library, instead of SDL or OpenGL, which could be used to do this from a simple terminal window? The ncurses library offered a great improvement in keyboard handling, but it wasn't enough. Hope someone can help

Thanks!

What you are looking for is the "ncurses" library.
http://www.google.nl/search?q=ncurses+tutorial

Thanks, but I've already tried it. My mistake for saying KEY_UP and KEY_DOWN, which are actual keys in ncurses...

What I really need is to receive key press and release events, but I don't think this can be done with ncurses... At least I haven't realized how to do it yet. I found though something about putting the keyboard in RAW mode, so that I'm then able to do what I want. I haven't tried it yet:

http://listas.hispalinux.es/pipermai...er/000442.html

Let's see if it does the job. Greetz!

Google 'non-blocking character-at-a-time terminal IO' or search these forums for 'getch'.
--- rod.

I've tried that, but no I doesn't suits me either. I'll explain:

The problem with that is that if I press for example X and hold it I start reading a stream of x characters, but if, while still holding it, I press Z then the stream of x stop and a stream of z begins, so I don't know if the user is still pressing x.

I realized that I have no other choice than to be able to receive the press and release key events. I found googling that there's a way to put the keyboard in "RAW" mode using fnctl so that I could recive a code indicating the key and the event (press, release), although I couldn't make it work with the (very little) documentation I found.

I also realized that even if I managed to code it, I would end up with my own implementation of the same functionality that libraries like SDL already provide, and it would be kind of a waste of time. So I the end I sticked to SDL

Greetz!