Can't Capture Mouse Events with NCurses

[moeabdol]

Greetings Programs,
I hope this is the right place to post this question. I have been playing around with ncurses and I'm writing a small test program to test out the capabilities of ncurses. Everything seems to be fine until I start trying to use the mouse in my programs.

I'm using the default terminal xterm-256color on my mac book. When I echo $TERM I get xterm-256color and when I echo $TERMINFO I get /usr/share/terminfo

Seems fine to me. I'm not sure, but I searched the capabilities of xterm-256color and it shows over at wikipedia that it supports colors, mouse and many other capabilities.Following is my simple code

#include <ncurses.h>
int main()
{ 
   initscr(); 
   cbreak(); 
   noecho(); 
   mousemask(ALL_MOUSE_EVENTS, NULL); 
   int mouse_input = wgetch(stdscr); 
   endwin(); 
   return 0;
}

This progy is written in C. I use gcc to compile and gdb to debug.Compile command: cc -Wall -g -lncurses ncurses_simple_mouse_demo.c -o ncurses_simple_mouse_demoWhen I debug I break at endwin() and run the program. wgetch(stdscr) doesn't seem to recognise any clicks but only recognises keyboard input!I'm not sure if this is right...I hope you guys can help me out...thank you in advance

[Nominal Animal]

You need to use the keypad mode. Add

    keypad(stdscr, TRUE);

before the mousemask() line. See the documentation for details.

An example program:

#include <curses.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    char   buffer[1024];
    MEVENT event;
    int    c;

    initscr();
    cbreak();
    noecho();
    curs_set(0); /* Invisible cursor */
    halfdelay(1); /* Don't wait for more than 1/10 seconds for a keypress */
    keypad(stdscr, TRUE); /* Enable keypad mode */
    mousemask(ALL_MOUSE_EVENTS, NULL); /* Report all mouse events */

    while (1) {

        c = wgetch(stdscr);

        /* Enter or newline exits the program. */
        if (c == '\r' || c == '\n')
            break;

        /* No event? */
        if (c == ERR)
            sprintf(buffer, "Nothing happened.");
        else
        if (KEY_MOUSE == c) {
            /* Mouse event. */
            if (OK == getmouse(&event))
                sprintf(buffer, "Mouse at row %3d, column %3d: 0x%08lx", event.y, event.x, (unsigned long)event.bstate);
            else
                sprintf(buffer, "Bad mouse event.");
        } else
            sprintf(buffer, "Key '%s' (0x%04x = %d) pressed.", keyname(c), c, c);

        move(0, 0);
        insertln();
        addstr(buffer);
        clrtoeol();
        move(0, 0);
    }

    endwin();

    return 0;
}

[moeabdol]

Thank you Nominal Animal...I have tried running your code and it keeps showing me "Nothing Happened" although I keep pressing the mouse left button everywhere on the terminal screen...I really appreciate your code...thanks

[Nominal Animal]

That is strange. I did verify the test program in both xterm-271-1ubuntu2.1 and xfce4-terminal-0.4.8-1ubuntu1, with the test program compiled using libncurses5-5.9-4, on Xubuntu 12.04 (locally), and on CentOS 5 (remotely), and it worked like a charm.

Could you please change cbreak() to raw() and retry?

[moeabdol]

That is strange. I did verify the test program in both xterm-271-1ubuntu2.1 and xfce4-terminal-0.4.8-1ubuntu1, with the test program compiled using libncurses5-5.9-4, on Xubuntu 12.04 (locally), and on CentOS 5 (remotely), and it worked like a charm.

Could you please change cbreak() to raw() and retry?

I have tried so, but still with no mouse events captured

I'm guessing your code is perfectly correct, however since i'm using xterm-256color on my macbook then there must be something wrongly customised in my terminal settings. I'm not sure how I can setup my environment correctly to use ncurses ... Thanks

[moeabdol]

I'm actually installing linux on a virtual machine right now to test the code on that...I have a strong feeling that things will work by default on linux...I'll let you know of the test results...thanks again

[moeabdol]

just to confirm that I have tested this on Cent OS 6.3 and your source code works like a charm....i'll try looking into the terminal settings in Cent OS and mimic the same on OSX...peace

[Nominal Animal]

I think I found the problem. Mac OS X Terminal requires you to press the Alt or Option key while clicking, for Terminal to recognize and deliver mouse events to terminal applications. (And the xterm in Mac OS X needs X11 support for mouse events.) You could try iTerm2. Its GPL (free and libre), and seems to have better mouse support.

I don't use Apple products, so I might be wrong, though.

[moeabdol]

I think I found the problem. Mac OS X Terminal requires you to press the Alt or Option key while clicking, for Terminal to recognize and deliver mouse events to terminal applications. (And the xterm in Mac OS X needs X11 support for mouse events.) You could try iTerm2. Its GPL (free and libre), and seems to have better mouse support.

I don't use Apple products, so I might be wrong, though.

Yes! It captures the mouse keys when I press the option key while I click the mouse...this was on the mac osx xterm-256color terminal...I can't thank you enough Nominal Animal ありがとございます　

[moeabdol]

I downloaded iTerm2 as you have suggested and it's super awesome! I think this will be my new default terminal... Thanks