Teletext (also TRS-80) 2x3 mosaics got into Unicode 13. I hope Kaypro's 2x4 mosaics get into version 14.

I used this for a couple of toy programs when I worked through last year's Advent of Code. I found that it worked well and enjoyed using it, but again these were for toy programs.

It is ok, but I would not recommend it. It got off to a great start but I ran into problems/limitations with some fairly basic stuff.

I can't recall exactly what my issue was with it however, it has been a few months.

I tried to use Gui.cs and wasn't able to. It has a lot of rough edges and I had to move on because it wasn't well fleshed out.

Other/better .NET libraries include:

https://github.com/spectresystems/spectre.console

https://github.com/TomaszRewak/C-sharp-console-gui-framework

https://github.com/elw00d/consoleframework

Check out blessings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24423590

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

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

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/).

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

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/

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

Indeed it was! This library produced easily discoverable UIs, it worked just as well with the keyboard or the mouse. The default layout was very pleasant.

From the developer's perspective, it was a joy to work with. I made some projects using pascal and C++ if I remember correctly.

Wow! What an awesome and pleasant surprise! I have such fond memories of using Borland IDEs from that era and some of the applications built with TV. Thank you for making it modernized and available on Linux!

https://github.com/fdehau/tui-rs

Liked using this. I wrote a TUI for my company's api with it. I dont use the website much any more.

Can confirm that it's awesome for getting something small and useful done quickly.

I was a beginner Haskell programmer when I first used brick, and it's great exposure to building a real world application (something a lot of Haskell beginners crave learning). Docs are very good too.

Code for anyone that might find it useful: https://github.com/2mol/pboy

edit: forgot to mention that it's very "Elm architecture", so if you like modern frontend development, then you might feel right at home in that paradigm.

came to mention Brick too. The advantage is that it follows the unidirectional data flow pattern. Aka the Elm architecture. the advantage is that the whole interface is drawn from the data. (or the view is generated only from the model). This simplifies development a lot.

This doesn't support windows.

It looks like Tcell probably, assuming I've understood what Tcell does correctly.

https://github.com/gdamore/tcell/

I prefer cview, it has added many fixes and PRs not in tview.

https://gitlab.com/tslocum/cview

You could check out AsciiMatics. https://github.com/peterbrittain/asciimatics

Here are some examples how it can look in action: https://github.com/peterbrittain/asciimatics/wiki

For nim i like this one: https://github.com/johnnovak/illwill

It is immediate mode so you render the entire UI every tick, though it is smart enough to not actually redraw things that didn't change.

Also take a look at Repl.it's "CLUI"[0] which they released fairly recently

[0] https://blog.repl.it/clui

I do not really understand the need/want/wish for something like this. There is no real textmode on contemporary hardware anymore. That is all emulated to get the legacy during startup going, until some graphical environment takes over. Keyword is framebuffer here.

Sounds like gopher?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)

There was a sliver of time in the 1990s, in academic settings, where it was very easy to get onto an Internet-connected Unix computer, but before HTML existed. There were many plain text Internet applications.

Sorry, I don't know how popular it is with respect to similar solutions.

Thank you. I completely forgot about 1.

I realize, with abit of shame, urwid is thousands of times more popular than my own pip-chill tool.

Seconding this, it’s what I used for my https://github.com/wtheisen/TerminusBrowser project and while it is a little weird the number of features and modes you can get out of it are fantastic

I've been looking for something similar that either has a markup language associated with it or is easy to add one to. I wish to prototype a GUI markup standard with it as a proof of concept so that we can have GUI-over-HTTP instead of live with the ever failing & bloated HTML/JS/DOM/CSS GUI emulators. So far, Terminal.Gui looks interesting, but I don't know if it's cross-platform yet.

I like https://github.com/bpython/curtsies by @ballingt. It was used to implement bpython, one of the best python REPLs imo.

I'd to try out https://github.com/ggerganov/imtui Looks like a lot of fun.

There is someone that is picking up the work. They emailed me a few weeks ago about how they are starting a new termbox org on Github, but I haven't checked into its progress yet.

Either way, it is an extremely minimalistic library that has well documented code, so it's very possible to tailor it to whatever needs you have.

Was really surprised with all the JS etc options I had to scroll through to find ncurses, which to me is synonymous with TUIs!

Using a higher-level wrapper is going to be way more portable since they handle all the gotchas. And also, ncurses is just highly unpleasant to use directy

When I saw this message I was reminded of a post I read recently:

http://xn--rpa.cc/irl/term.html

Here's how it starts:

"so here's a short tutorial on ansi escape codes and terminal control, because you philistines won't stop using ncurses and oh my god WHY ARE WE STILL USING NCURSES IT IS THE TWENTY FIRST FUCKING CENTURY"

For small CLI tools, I find the following nodejs packages pretty helpful:

- [commanderjs] lets you easily build ergonomic CLI apps (wires up --help and usage descriptions) --- https://github.com/tj/commander.js/

- [chalk] colors in the terminal --- https://github.com/chalk/chalk

- [figlet] big splash text --- https://www.npmjs.com/package/figlet

Good for Anchorhead, but not for something outside the Z Machine ;)

If you want a Terminal Nintendo Emulator check out https://justine.storage.googleapis.com/nesemu1.html

I’ve often thought I’d like to spend some days writing ncurses interfaces in Guile.

http://www.gnu.org/software/guile-ncurses/

The documentation always inspired confidence. Sadly haven’t written anything more than hello world.

I haven't used it but since it hasn't been mentioned, I recalled that Visidata's rendering library vdtui.py could be used for these tasks. They say so in their readme

https://github.com/saulpw/visidata

For anyone who want to do it without a library it's actually really easy to get started with

  #include <stdio.h>
  #include <termios.h>
  #include <unistd.h>

and follow the beginning chapters of the great "Build Your Own Text Editor" tutorial[0].

[0] https://viewsourcecode.org/snaptoken/kilo/02.enteringRawMode...

I blogged about blessings here, also briefly comparing one of its capabilities - saving and restoring terminal state - to that of C's curses:

Blessings, curses-like Python library:

https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2012/08/blessings-curses-like-py...

Oberon. :-)

It's the granddaddy of all of them.

Overview: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/

Academic paper (but highly accessible): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d48b/ecdaf5c3d962e2778f804e...

Yes, it's an OS as well as a language although a tiny one that runs under MacOS, Linux and Windows if you want. So does the bare language of the same name. (Think of it as Pascal 3.)

The inspiration behind Plan 9's Acme.