From: Phillip Gawlowski <pg@...>
Date: 2009-12-31T22:10:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Automated testing of visual library (ncurses)

On 31.12.2009 14:02, (rkumar) Sentinel wrote:
> As i work more on a ncurses widget library, I am wondering how does one
> do automated testing for a software that is primarily visual. Whenever i
> make changes, I need to ensure that things still show correctly - the
> cursor position on screen, widget placement, text placement, text
> wrapping, highlighting and attributes of widget, scrolling, cropping,
> navigation, key handling, etc.

> Thoughts and pointers welcome.

You could take a look at web app testing frameworks (like WATIR, or 
Selenium), and see how they do their tests.

That assumes, though, that you have similar access to ncurses widgets as 
you'd have for HTML tags.

Another option are tools emulating keyboard / mouse input, and let those 
loose on the application with the use of macros / testing frameworks.

Not sure if you can test for "pixel perfectness", but since ncurses' 
layout depends on the size of the TTY used, I don't know if that'd be 
useful, anyway.

--
Phillip Gawlowski