Question: copy/deepcopy with the curses module?

[Damond Walker]

    I'm writing a small program which uses the standard curses module.
While the program runs I show message boxes, sometimes two levels deep.  At
this point I have a nice layered display.  Good so far.  :)

    Now, the user interacts with the topmost message box so that it
dissapears.  To repaint the screen I'm clearing it and repainting everything
from scratch.  The end result is what I want but the performance is, shall
we say, somewhat pitiful.  On a fast machine the user probably wouldn't
notice but on a slower machine the user can actually track the progress of
the paint process.

    The code is layered like this...

    class SIO: <contains methods which interact with curses>
        self.stdscr = curses.init...()
        self.s = newwin(...)

    class MsgBox(DialogContainer):
        def __init__(self, Screen, Message):
            self.SetProperty("SCREEN", Screen)   # Screen points to instance
of SIO


    All my classes use the same instance of SIO (which basically provides a
wrapper around displaying text on the console).

    What I want to do is get a snapshot of the current SIO instance.  This
would allow me to quickly save the current SIO instance in a temp. variable,
do some screen updates, and then quickly repaint the screen by restoring the
SIO instance to it's older value.

    I tried to use the Copy module (copy and deepcopy) but it complained
about how it couldn't copy the curses stuff.

    Anyone have any pointers? (note: I'd like to do this using the standard
modules which are distributed with Python 1.5.2)


                    Damond