Ask HN: Recommendations for Good TUI Libraries (Text User Interface)?

#1

Post by andrewstuart » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

Anyone seen anything exciting/interesting in the field of TUI's? Any language, as long as the library is interesting with good examples or screen shots/videos.

For those unfamiliar, a TUI is a text mode user interface library, for building user interfaces within character oriented plain text consoles.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for Good TUI Libraries (Text User Interface)?

#2

Post by dheera » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

I wrote a Python library to draw graphics in a console using Braille dots, with a fallback mode to ASCII:

https://github.com/dheera/python-termgraphics

I used it in ROSshow, which visualizes robot sensor data inside a terminal:

https://github.com/dheera/rosshow

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for Good TUI Libraries (Text User Interface)?

#3

Post by andrewstuart » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

This looks pretty impressive:

Terminal.Gui - Terminal GUI toolkit for .NET

https://github.com/migueldeicaza/gui.cs

Written by Miguel de Icaza.

Hanselman wrote on it here:

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/Its2020AndItIsTimeForTextMode...

and here:

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/DotnetDependsIsAGreatTextMode...

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for Good TUI Libraries (Text User Interface)?

#4

Post by aaron-santos » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

https://github.com/chjj/blessed is a curses-like library with a high level terminal interface API for node.js. It also has impressive demos.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for Good TUI Libraries (Text User Interface)?

#5

Post by imhoguy » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:46 PM UTC

Don't know why, but I have imagined a CSS framework for text only.

Edit: found one https://github.com/vinibiavatti1/TuiCss

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for Good TUI Libraries (Text User Interface)?

#6

Post by allthing » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

I'm not really sure any TUI I've ever seen could really be classified as "good" but the one I like best is probably urwid (http://urwid.org/).

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for Good TUI Libraries (Text User Interface)?

#7

Post by css » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

Python includes bindings for curses and includes some pretty good documentation: https://docs.python.org/3/howto/curses.html#curses-howto

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for Good TUI Libraries (Text User Interface)?

#8

Post by aeontech » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

python prompt toolkit [0] and click [1] are used to create tools like pgcli [2], which is utterly wonderful.

[0]: https://github.com/prompt-toolkit/python-prompt-toolkit

[1]: https://click.palletsprojects.com/en/7.x/

[2]: https://www.pgcli.com/

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for Good TUI Libraries (Text User Interface)?

#9

Post by jakobdabo » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

notcurses - https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for Good TUI Libraries (Text User Interface)?

#10

Post by heldergg » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

Turbo Vision, this is TUI perfection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Vision