I’m working on a fun project to generate Ulam spirals in Python. The program takes a size and displays the spiral in the terminal, but when the spiral gets large or the terminal is small, the output becomes messy and overlapping. I considered using ncurses to split the screen into two scrollable areas: one for logging messages and one for the spiral display. Although the basic code works, scrolling removes previously displayed lines, which might be due to a refresh issue not updating the correct starting position. I’ve tried methods like window.getyx() to track the cursor and getmaxyx() to measure the pad, yet neither provides the total count of displayed lines. Is it possible to accurately count all lines, including those that wrap, without managing them manually?
I’ve faced similar challenges with terminal-based visualizations. While ncurses is powerful, it can be tricky for complex displays like Ulam spirals. Have you considered using a library like ‘asciimatics’? It’s designed for creating animations and more advanced terminal graphics, including scrollable views. It might handle the line wrapping and scrolling issues more gracefully than raw ncurses.
Alternatively, if you’re set on using ncurses, you could try implementing a virtual ‘canvas’ where you store the entire spiral in memory, then only render the visible portion to the screen. This approach would let you track the total size accurately and handle scrolling more predictably. It’s a bit more work, but it gives you full control over the display logic.
hey man, try a GUI library like tkinter or pygame. they might be easier for big spirals and scrollin around. could save u some headaches with terminal issues. worth checkin if ur cool with leavin terminal.
Wow, that Ulam spiral project sounds super cool! 
I’m really curious about how you’re generating it. Have you thought about maybe saving the spiral as an image file instead? That way you could make it as big as you want without worrying about terminal size limits.
But if you’re set on the terminal display (which is pretty awesome, tbh), have you looked into using something like rich or blessed? They’re Python libraries that can do some pretty magic stuff with terminal output, including scrollable areas.
Oh, and I’m wondering - how are you calculating the prime numbers for the spiral? Are you using a sieve method or checking each number individually? That could be another fun area to optimize if you haven’t already!
What’s the largest spiral you’ve managed to generate so far? I bet it looks amazing with all those prime number patterns! 