Ruby Ncurses Forms and widgets library

Last revision: 2010-09-04

DESCRIPTION

rbcurse is a comprehensive widget library written in ruby for creating ncurses applications. Unlike ncurses forms and fields, all rbcurse widgets can be created at *any* time, and modified at any time. Most widgets have vim-like or emacs-like key bindings for more keyboard friendliness. I am currently focusing on this aspect.

Version 1.1.5: works with ruby 1.9.2, contains more files missed out from gemspec (rbcurse.rb), and corrects some things that give errors in 1.8.7.

Version 1.1.4: works with ruby 1.9.2, also contains files missed out from gemspec.

This page could be outdated. Major additions and work has been committed. Check the Blog and github page here for the latest. This branch works under ruby 1.9 (git branch) The "classic" branch is for ruby 1.8 only. Please check for the various branches (currently working on branch master. ) Downloads

All widgets expose events to which actions can be bound (typically movement, enter/leave, data modifications etc). Many are built using the MVC architecture so there are data-models and renderers that may be modified/extended/replaced. For example, for table editing each column datatype has its own cell-renderer (for string, numeric, checkboxes and comboboxes).

This library depends on ncurses gem, but only for the Window (and in some cases Pad) class. It does not use ncurses forms and fields which are very restrictive and cumbersome.

Released 0.1.2 on Feb 22. Minor tweaks and enhancements in 0.1.3 in March (1.8.x version)

Released 1.1.1 in March 2010. Many improvements and features. This is the 1.9.1 version

• Project Page..

• Download Gem

• Latest screenshots and updates on blog.

• Daily updates on: github.
• Test programs are in examples dir: test2.rb, testtabp.rb, testtodo.rb, viewtodo.rb and more.

INSTALL

Please see github page for latest instructions. ncurses-ruby gem seems to be broken at the moment.

sudo gem install ncurses
sudo gem install rbcurse

If you are on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, please use ncurses-0.9.1 (see instructions on http://trickyco.de/ ).

FEATURES

• entry fields (pure ruby)
• scrollable list box (new, editable with Field, checkbox and combos)
• form - takes care of focus traversal and other general stuff
• key trapping - takes care of catching Alt/Meta keys in addition to Control, Function, Ctrl+Meta, etc
• multi-line editable area with scrolling, key mapping, wrapping, etc
• colors - may be set using English names, not color pairs
• togglebutton, radio and check buttons (with mnemonics)
• message boxes, alerts, confirm dialogs (video)
• menubar - with submenu and CheckBoxMenuItem
• popup list
• popup menus
• tabbedpane (multiple forms using tabbed metaphor) (video)
• combobox (video)
• labels with mnemonics (hotkeys), multi-line with word wrapping
• multi-column table (with cell editing) (video)
• Action classes : in case you wish to attach one action to a button, menuitem, popup etc, and also wish to be able to disable/enable them from one place.
• Variables (like TkVariable) a proxy variable, can be attached to various widgets, actions can be attached to update of variable
• master19 branch has many new widgets such as splitpanes, scrollpanes, etc.
• Scrollable Forms
• Containers that can store multiple components and cycle between them
• Text objects that can store multiple documents and cycle between them
• Vim-like text editing in some text objects
• Vim-like numeric arguments (12d, 23j)
• Emacs-like numeric arguments in editable components
• Emacs kill-ring in TextArea
• Unlimited Undo and redo in TextArea

Above may be created using DSL like syntax, or hashes.

MISSING FEATURES

• Tree component - in the next round of development it will be added
• Progress Bar
• Spinner

TUTORIAL

Here is a getting started page for rbcurse.

STATUS

Stable. If you've been googling for "ruby ncurses", you've probably found many projects that have not released code or are abandoned midway. This is a new project (released 2008), but has released sample applications, and there are many screenshots and a few demos (MOV format), so you can check it out before you download and install.

CURRENT WORK

Currently (as of 2010-05-07), write a tutorial for rbcurse, and then think about cleaning up and cutting out cruft and perhaps removing inconsistencies. I am also considering an optional command-mode in as many components as makes sense. This will allow a user to switch to command mode (vim like) and issue vim-ish commands to navigate, change, edit, etc. By default, this mode is off.

(outdated)
My current focus is on writing some applications, to not only test the widgets but also find out loopholes or missing functionality. I have made a TODO app (video) which allows for editing of multiple rows and columns in a tabular format. The second was a File Explorer (2 paned) which I shall continue working on, so it has a fair amount of functionality. The third which i shall start in a day or so, is a small SQL client (image)(video), which will test the ability to change table structures, find loopholes in tables with a large number of columns.

See this link for demos and screenshots. Please note that the demos are hastily created and there's a lot more to the apps than shown. File Explorer Demo

Tiny SQL Client demo

Todo Demo

A screenshot of the Finder/Explorer:

A screenshot of table editing (string, numbers, floats, boolean (checkbox) and multi-values:

A screenshot of list editing:

Screenshots of combos

Left and right aligned checkboxes:

Context sensitive popup-menu (attached to table) :

There are submenus, and some options are disabled conditionally. Hotkeys and accelerators have been defined.

For more, check the blog linked on the top, or this folder.

Acknowledgements

• Thanks to the creators and maintainers of ruby and ncurses-ruby and ncurses.

• Also to all the helpful folk on ruby-forum.com for fielding my silly questions with patience (usually).

• Thanks to all those who responded to my queries posted on my blog.

• Thanks to all the great articles which helped me learn ruby, the pickaxe book, Jay Fields, Eli Bendersky, JEG, (_why, I still can’t understand a word of what you say!), and more.

• Thanks to manveru (michael) used your window class and adapted getch

• Thanks to sup - picked up some Color related stuff from there.

• Thanks to Jim Freeze. Learned how to write DSLs from here.

Developed on Vim editor on Mac OS X.