Is there a multiplatform TTY library? I can of cou...
# multiplatforml
loke
09/05/2025, 12:41 PMIs there a multiplatform TTY library? I can of course use ncurses from kotlin native, but I'd like something that also works on the JVM.
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jw
09/05/2025, 1:01 PMWhat capabilities do you need?
jw
09/05/2025, 1:02 PMI have https://github.com/JakeWharton/mosaic/tree/trunk/mosaic-tty for super low level and https://github.com/JakeWharton/mosaic/tree/trunk/mosaic-tty-terminal for medium level
jw
09/05/2025, 1:03 PMOr just regular-ass Mosaic for very high level
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loke
09/05/2025, 1:06 PMNot much. I need to be able to put characters are specific locations, read the keyboard, etc.
loke
09/05/2025, 1:06 PMIf there are ways to draw windows, menus etc, that'd be good too, so I don't have to implement all of that myself.
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jw
09/05/2025, 1:10 PMSo Mosaic will someday get there. The medium-level library above does keyboard input and mouse input and all that perfectly fine. The high-level library doesn't fully expose all that just yet. There is a keyboard input modifier but no focus manager nor equivalent of a text field that automatically renders keypresses. And mouse support is not exposed at all yet.
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loke
09/05/2025, 2:05 PMInteresting. You don't seem to do any termlib integration yet?
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jw
09/05/2025, 2:06 PMI'm not sure what you mean by that
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loke
09/05/2025, 2:21 PMTermlib is the database of terminal definitions so you can send the correct control codes.
loke
09/05/2025, 2:22 PMOops, sorry. Terminfo
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jw
09/05/2025, 2:23 PMAh, correct. It's entirely a capability-based system through interactive queries.
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loke
09/05/2025, 2:25 PMI'm not really familiar with compose, but I'm looking at the sample code, and it looks declarative, is this correct?
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jw
09/05/2025, 2:25 PMYes
jw
09/05/2025, 2:25 PMBtw I do use the
XTGETTCAPl
loke
09/05/2025, 2:26 PMIs there a way to define, say, a menu and then call a function saying "draw this menu and return the value selected"?
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jw
09/05/2025, 2:26 PMSomeone would have to build that as a high-level component
jw
09/05/2025, 2:26 PMI don't really have the time to work at that layer yet
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loke
09/05/2025, 2:27 PMAre there low level functions that does something like "go to line 5, col 3" and "draw a character with a certain colour"?
jw
09/05/2025, 2:29 PMYou can render anything you want at the declarative layer. There just aren't reusable high-level components that correspond to something like a "menu" or "window"
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loke
09/05/2025, 2:29 PMOh I see. I can use this as a low level primitive and create my menus from there.
loke
09/05/2025, 2:30 PMOK, this may actually be a solution to my problem right now. I'll try to build something with it.
I want to add some text-based user interface components for my programming language interpreter. Like a viewer for tabular data for example. The idea is that you can call it from the language to display information.
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loke
09/05/2025, 3:39 PMThanks. I'll take a look. Right now I'm trying to integrate mosaic in my product 🙂
loke
09/05/2025, 3:40 PMRather, 'project'. It's open source.
loke
09/05/2025, 3:49 PMThanks
loke
09/05/2025, 3:50 PMLast time I actually implemented a TTY-based UI for an application was... hmm... around 1995 I think.
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David Herman
09/05/2025, 3:50 PMNiiiiiice
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