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Terminal.Gui: A Cross Platform Terminal UI Toolkit for .NET

github.com

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Re: Terminal.Gui: A Cross Platform Terminal UI Toolkit for .NET

#31

Post by DesiLurker »

tecleandor wrote: post #26
hazrmard wrote: post #23

Looking at the demo images, I must admit that I have some traumatic memories associated with that shade of blue on a console :) Mostly from fiddling with BIOS settings etc. My only experience with C# is in using the Unity 3D game engine. Now with a console apps ecosystem, cross-platform focus, GUI libraries, machine learning stuff, mobile apps. It's becoming an attractive prospect by the day.

Hah! But it also feels a bit Norton Commander to me, and that's not that bad ;)

Also somehow reminded me of the old Borland Turbo-C++ 'IDE'. would love to have something like that with good tag navigation for daily driver.

Re: Terminal.Gui: A Cross Platform Terminal UI Toolkit for .NET

#32

Post by VikingCoder »

DesiLurker wrote: post #31
tecleandor wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah! But it also feels a bit Norton Commander to me, and that's not that bad ;)

Also somehow reminded me of the old Borland Turbo-C++ 'IDE'. would love to have something like that with good tag navigation for daily driver.

Also "XTree" which was probably the best software ever for DOS.

Re: Terminal.Gui: A Cross Platform Terminal UI Toolkit for .NET

#33

Post by VikingCoder »

jabart wrote: post #28

About four years ago I had a meeting with a distributor who had terminal app and wanted to move it to a web based app. Everyone had the keyboard shortcuts memorized and did a quick demo that the refresh rate of the monitor was not fast (only slightly joking here) enough to go through all the screens they did for each task they had to do in this system. Interesting that this could be a useful replacement for something…

I don't think you're joking at all. People underestimate how quickly people can navigate through complex systems when they're given time to practice:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/xa50x1/ma...

Re: Terminal.Gui: A Cross Platform Terminal UI Toolkit for .NET

#36

Post by malkia »

On the C++ front, I've been using this and love it - https://github.com/ArthurSonzogni/FTXUI - it also has wasm target, so may target the web.

I'm regular Far Commander on Windows, and Midnight Commander, also known as mc on Linux/OSX. In fact my "Command-Prompt" on Windows is always FAR (this comes with certain limitations, but I'm so used to it, I can't do my normal work without it). I could never get into the Explorer, and only use it in rare cases.

Re: Terminal.Gui: A Cross Platform Terminal UI Toolkit for .NET

#38

Post by littlecranky67 »

VikingCoder wrote: post #33
jabart wrote: post #28

About four years ago I had a meeting with a distributor who had terminal app and wanted to move it to a web based app. Everyone had the keyboard shortcuts memorized and did a quick demo that the refresh rate of the monitor was not fast (only slightly joking here) enough to go through all the screens they did for each task they had to do in this system. Interesting that this could be a useful replacement for something…

I don't think you're joking at all. People underestimate how quickly people can navigate through complex systems when they're given time to practice: https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/xa50x1/ma...

I remember the early 90s, when the women at the local groceries store (Aldi Germany) were equally as fast when typing in the prices of the articles using just a numpad keyboard on the register - before barcode scanners were a thing. Today it seems surreal or special, but back then you were basically considered a trained professional on the checkout counter.

Re: Terminal.Gui: A Cross Platform Terminal UI Toolkit for .NET

#39

Post by cek »

alkonaut wrote: post #7
BeefWellington wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be showing my age here, but I think most people would expect a TUI to provide arrow key navigation and highlight by default, which is not demonstrated. Simply mapping Gui -> TUI isn't really a good user experience IME. The terminal should generally be keyboard-first/designed with keyboard-only in mind.

Are there any specific examples from the demo that don't show proper highlights (i.e. that don't look exactly like e.g. TurboPascal, Norton Commander or Linux menuconfig in terms of hints/highlight/focus)? This isn't an emulation of a mouse gui stuck in a terminal, this is literally a port of an older curses lib to the latest .net, so it doesn't feel like it should have any unnecessary influence from desktop ui syste…

This is NOT "literally a port of an older curses lib to the latest .net". It is a complete API for building terminal UI applications using .NET that leverages curses under the covers when running in a non-Windows environment (on Windows it uses the native Windows console APIs).

For completeness, Terminal.Gui is built on top of a "Console Abstraction Layer" (CAL; I just invented that term), via the "ConsoleDriver" base class. There are four subclasses provided:

- CursesDriver: Uses curses and is the default on Linux/Mac.

- WindowsDriver: Uses the Windows console API and is the default on Windows (only works on Windows)

- NetDriver: Uses the .NET console API and works on all platforms

- FakeDriver: Used for unit testing.

NetDriver is the slowest. WindowsDriver is the fastest. CursesDriver is the biggest bugfarm ;-).

Re: Terminal.Gui: A Cross Platform Terminal UI Toolkit for .NET

#40

Post by onemoresoop »

VikingCoder wrote: post #32
DesiLurker wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also somehow reminded me of the old Borland Turbo-C++ 'IDE'. would love to have something like that with good tag navigation for daily driver.

Also "XTree" which was probably the best software ever for DOS.

I remember Xtree back in 1990. Oh boy, do I feel old. I still miss the lightning fast navigation using Xtree and NC afterwards. I used NC till the long filenames were an issue and though I know it supported it later on I just moved on to crappier trends. One recent trend is to completely disempower users by obscuring the file system away.
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