tetraketra / foxglove

An aesthetic terminal rendering library for use in TUIs.

1. What is Foxglove? 🌷

Foxglove is an aesthetic and highly-configurable python-based terminal rendering support library with an accompanying custom frame definition language. Consider this a personalized alternative to Urwid with features customized to my use cases only.

2. What is Bouquet? 💐

.bqt is a plaintext custom frame definition language with support for variable sizing. Bouquet frames ignore all standard English-language alphabetic characters [a-zA-Z] except for [AaBbCcLlX], which are reserved for renderer or interpreter instructions. Bouquet intentionally requires all alphabetic characters to be inserted during runtime using .fill() (!!!TBD!!!). The following characters have special meanings:

• A|a and B|b define strictly-rectangular text regions.
  • A, a, B, and b do not connect to each other.
  • AABBBAAA will generate three independent numbered text frames.
  • A and B hard cut. Printing Hello world! to AAAAAA yields Hello .
  • a and b soft cut. Printing Hello world! to aaaaaa yields Hel....
  • Multi-line regions text-wrap by default.
• L|l is an alternative to the AaBb format for a multi-line list region.
• X is a smart division and expansion character. We call an orthogonal line of Xs a "cut."
  • Cuts must be drawn in axis lines across the canvas. These may intersect and you may have multiple in the same axis.
  • Cuts reference the characters to their left/up to repeat the edge of a frame region to expand it to variable sizing.
  • If you don't want vertical resizing, don't have a horizontal cut.
  • Config in the form X:Y:Z can allow for biased expansion, handing out repeats in those proportions.
  • Expansions are Bouquet-only. They do not repeat printed text.
  • ╔═X╝ expands to ╔═══...═╝.