On Monday, 9 January 2017 at 23:33:45 UTC, Era Scarecrow wrote:
For direct interactions (a game menu or similar) getting individual characters makes sense; I can't help but think Rogue-likes. However for data input (per line basis) or doing bulk data/processing, it doesn't work well.
Well, line processing depends on which level you're working on. My terminal.d includes a getline() function which gives the high level interface on a line level, but its implementation uses the individual events (and you can hook those for customization btw) because it allows the library to provide a much richer UX - line navigation with arrow keys, editing, insertion, etc.
Bulk I/O is a major win too, but with direct user interaction, the bottleneck is (almost always nowadays) the user's actual input - even quick typists are insanely slow sources of data as far as the computer is concerned. And there, being able to arrow, backspace, etc., is a huge productivity win for them and seeing the individual events gives the program the control it needs to make that work well.
