ratatui

Related: TUI

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A Rust package for creating terminal user applications (TUIs).

Terminal Setup

When a TUI is spun up, a few things have to happen:

• An alternate screen is spun up—so that the output of your original terminal isn’t affected
• Raw mode is enabled—this turns off input and output processing by the terminal, allowing the TUI control over when to print characters to the screen

At teardown, the opposite happens.

Basic Setup

• Implement your own Widget trait (this assumes you need state)
  • Implement .render required by the trait
  • Define a .run method for the widget that
    • call terminal.draw
    • handle key events (powered by crossterm)
• In the main fn,
  • initialize a ratatui terminal
  • upon completion, restore the original terminal

fn main() {
	let mut terminal = ratatui::init();
	...
	ratatui.restore();
}

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Thoughts

Was surprised that I have to manage spacing as part of a text (e.g. the ' ' prefix and suffix in " My Title ").