The Astra User Interface Library

Astra is a library for UNIX C/C++ programs providing user interfaces for graphical workstation and ordinary text terminals. It included widgets as command buttons, choice box, radio buttons, scrolling lists, scrollbars, pop-up/pull-down menus, text fields, text areas, terminal emulators, sliding controls which behaved similarly in both environments. Only purely graphical widgets like the canvas had no effect in a text-only device. So most applications could be made portable with a single source code.

Astra was based on the X Window System (Xlib, no Intrinsics) and the curses library, both standard components of most UNIX environments.

Applications

Some programs and systems using Astra:

the LegoShell editor prototype used as a testbed for placement/routing algorithms
TeamSim, a distributed game
Undelete for Unix, a file recovery tool

Documents

C.A.Furuti, The Astra User Interface Library gzipped PostScript 86KB,
7th Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, Rio de Janeiro, 1993

C.A.Furuti, Warping Stars: Astra Programming 101, A-Hand Technical Report, 1994

C.A.Furuti, A Guide to Astra, A-Hand Technical Report, 1994