How to get 2 text windows with a single program
 

Hi,
Running Ubuntu and writing simple C programs.
I need 2 text windows, the one I have started in, and a second to display some debug information.
I can start a second screen using popen("/usr/X11R6/bin/xterm" "w"), and I get my new text window.
However, it is running a shell and I can't send any info to it!
Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Regards,

Chris.

Are you talking about doing this FROM your C program, or while you are editing code?

If it is while your are editing code, have you taken a look at the EMACS editor?

It is specifically designed to have code in one text window, and GDB output / interface in another.

Part of my own program, NOT part of the editing process.
When running a program in the console you can output text etc.
What I want is to open a second text window, with the functionality of xterm, that is I want it to recognise the ESC codes etc, so that I can output some debug info / status screens whilst still typing and getting messages in the original screen.

Chris.

I think you need to understand the difference between opening a window (what you want), and launching a program (what you're doing). To open a window (assuming using X), you must use X toolkit functions and primitives, and explicitly write text strings to the window. There may be more streamlined ways of doing this by using one of the desktop libraries/toolkits such as GTK (Gnome) or Qt (KDE). I'm not very familiar with any of these libraries; maybe someone who is can fill in more of the details.
--- rod.

Solved: How to get 2 text windows
 

I have a resonable solution to the problem:
I can start a new xterm with say popen();
Then if I do 'who' I can see the new terminal name such as /dev/pts/1

I then do
term = fopen("/dev/pts/1", "w");
fprintf(term,"This is some text");

and it comes up in my new window, including using ESC commands to clear the screen etc.

I need to automatically scan the result of 'who' but thats a minor problem.

Thanks for peoples help.

Chris.