gitgnu / gnu_tui

Text User Interface - 0.9.x

Project home: https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/tui/

This is the general purpose / all in one README. For detailed information, see the DOCUMENTION heading and/or the files in ./docs

WHAT IS TUI?

TUI is a framework for scripts to give them an interface like feeling, some 'bling bling' to output the data, and coding helpers for scripters.

It has a new approach to the console, as it allows to print your output to be either left, center or right aligned, or even beeing colored.

Furthermore it takes the scripters burdon of figuring out what application a $USER uses by providing wrappers for tasks like:

• download (curl/wget)
• edit
• filemgr
• ftp (ftp, sftp, lftp)
• install (dnf/yum, pacman, pkg, emerge, ... )
• web(browser)
• terminal

These wrappers will search for installed applications on the $USER computer, and save the first found (if default was missing) item to be the 'default' If none is found, it asks to install one or name it manually. This applies for GUI and TTY mode! (but not terminal, that is GUI only)

In the same style, it provides wrappers for everyday tasks a scripts comes by: Such as, but not limited to:

• bol-gui
• conf-{g,s}et
• list (alpha, none (default), num, roman) (auto=3, 1 or 2 colums)
• log
• progress (dash, numeric, bar)
• press
• select (-1 or -2 columns, auto=1-3)
• status
• wait
• yesno

But in fact, TUI is tui-browser! All other commands, are only to make it easier to write scripts that fit in it.

DEPENDENCIES

This is a quite short list:

• BASH
• GNU Coreutils (awk, grep, sed, ls, which)

Requires either one of (per line): (in most cases, one of these is always installed)

• emacs, nano, vim, vi
• curl, wget

For best possible experiene, it is recomended to have one of these installed as well.

• elinks, lynx, w3m, www
• ftp, sftp, lftp

If your favorite console command is missing in this list, please, let me know! :)

WHY BASH?

Steampunk, make high-tech from low-tech.

TUI was meant to be a minimal approach for maximal convenience, while 'letting even' endusers to update its code, in case of internet loss.

This has lead to interpreted languages like python or shells. Python in this scenario has had too many dependencies, and from all shells available out there in the wild, BASH seemed to be the most spread. Both, in pre-installed and install-able aspects...

PRO & CONTRA

• PRO

  • Small (tarball < 250k)
  • Lightweight (small memory footprint)
  • Portable (Requires a FHS conform system, BASH and GNU Coreutils)
  • 47 Powerfull and convenient commands

• CONTRA

  • Not spread yet, so you cant just share a single script. (Unless you use YASSI to install that script)
  • Scripts are not as secure as binaries

INSTALLATION

Once you changed into the TUI project root, simply run:

time (./configure --prefix=/usr ; make && sudo make install all)

EXAMPLE

To provide a small example, here is a short one.

tui-title "Asking a question:"
tui-yesno "Are you a scripter?"
ret=$?
tui-status $ret "You said: $(tui-str-bol-conv $ret)"

Which will output as:

# |                Asking a question:                  | #
# | Are you a scripter? (y/n)                        y | #
# | You said: yes                              [  ✓   ]| #

DOCUMENTION

For more details before installing, see the files in ./docs

For detailed usage documention, please install TUI and call:

tuirc html
tuirc samples

For more details, please see:

• See the News for news
• See the Chagelog for the latest changes
• See the Install page for help with (de-)installation.
• See the COPYING (GNU GPLv3+) for copyright/copyleft related information.
• See the COPYING.LESSER (GNU LPLv3+) for copyright/copyleft related information.
• Additional Licenses:
  • GNU Free Documentation License GFDL.txt for the documention
  • All scripts in ./docs/samples are licensed as GPLv3+ too,