From: gu <pistacchio@...>
Date: 2007-09-01T16:20:07+09:00
Subject: keyboard input: one character

hi to all!
i've seen this question posted many times without a single definitive 
answer. what i'm trying to get is a single character from the keyboard 
in a multiplatform solution: i hit the key "h" and rubu knows "h" has 
been pressed. i need it to detect the imput for a game i'm working on: 
insertin the key-detection into a loop would actually make the player 
interact with the game.

i've come across the library highline ( http://highline.rubyforge.org/ 
). the simplest program

require "highline/system_extensions"
include HighLine::SystemExtensions
#print "Enter one character:  "
while true
   char = get_character
   if char != nil
     puts char.chr
   end
end

only works to a certain extend. it puts out the received character only 
after the end of the program, not during its execution, for some strange 
reason. moreover it blocks the execution of the program while integrated 
into a gosu ( http://code.google.com/p/gosu/ ) framework.

on the other hand, any attempt on using curses results, don't know why, 
in the error:

LINES value must be >= 2 and <= -2616: got 1
initscr(): LINES=1 COLS=1: too small.

anyone can help?