How to scroll text in Python/Curses subwindow?

Question

In my Python script which uses Curses, I have a subwin to which some text is assigned. Because the text length may be longer than the window size, the text should be scrollable.

Answer 1

I wanted to use a scrolling pad to display content of some large text files but this didn't work well because texts can have line breaks and it was pretty hard to figure out how many characters to display at a time to fit the good number of columns and rows.

So I decided to first split my text files in lines of exactly COLUMNS characters, padding with spaces when lines were too short. Then scrolling the text become more easy.

Here is a sample code to display any text file:

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import curses
import locale
import sys

def main(filename, filecontent, encoding="utf-8"):
    try:
        stdscr = curses.initscr()
        curses.noecho()
        curses.cbreak()
        curses.curs_set(0)
        stdscr.keypad(1)
        rows, columns = stdscr.getmaxyx()
        stdscr.border()
        bottom_menu = u"(↓) Next line | (↑) Previous line | (→) Next page | (←) Previous page | (q) Quit".encode(encoding).center(columns - 4)
        stdscr.addstr(rows - 1, 2, bottom_menu, curses.A_REVERSE)
        out = stdscr.subwin(rows - 2, columns - 2, 1, 1)
        out_rows, out_columns = out.getmaxyx()
        out_rows -= 1
        lines = map(lambda x: x + " " * (out_columns - len(x)), reduce(lambda x, y: x + y, [[x[i:i+out_columns] for i in xrange(0, len(x), out_columns)] for x in filecontent.expandtabs(4).splitlines()]))
        stdscr.refresh()
        line = 0
        while 1:
            top_menu = (u"Lines %d to %d of %d of %s" % (line + 1, min(len(lines), line + out_rows), len(lines), filename)).encode(encoding).center(columns - 4)
            stdscr.addstr(0, 2, top_menu, curses.A_REVERSE)
            out.addstr(0, 0, "".join(lines[line:line+out_rows]))
            stdscr.refresh()
            out.refresh()
            c = stdscr.getch()
            if c == ord("q"):
                break
            elif c == curses.KEY_DOWN:
                if len(lines) - line > out_rows:
                    line += 1
            elif c == curses.KEY_UP:
                if line > 0:
                    line -= 1
            elif c == curses.KEY_RIGHT:
                if len(lines) - line >= 2 * out_rows:
                    line += out_rows
            elif c == curses.KEY_LEFT:
                if line >= out_rows:
                    line -= out_rows
    finally:
        curses.nocbreak(); stdscr.keypad(0); curses.echo(); curses.curs_set(1)
        curses.endwin()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
    encoding = locale.getpreferredencoding()
    try:
        filename = sys.argv[1]
    except:
        print "Usage: python %s FILENAME" % __file__
    else:
        try:
            with open(filename) as f:
                filecontent = f.read()
        except:
            print "Unable to open file %s" % filename
        else:
            main(filename, filecontent, encoding)

The main trick is the line:

lines = map(lambda x: x + " " * (out_columns - len(x)), reduce(lambda x, y: x + y, [[x[i:i+out_columns] for i in xrange(0, len(x), out_columns)] for x in filecontent.expandtabs(4).splitlines()]))

First, tabulations in the text are converted to spaces, then I used splitlines() method to convert my text in array of lines. But some lines may be longer than our COLUMNS number, so I splitted each line in chunk of COLUMNS characters and then used reduce to transform the resulting list in a list of lines. Finally, I used map to pad each line with trailing spaces so that its length is exactly COLUMNS characters.

Hope this helps.