UltraText 0.1

UltraText is a library that fills the almost empty niche of user interface frameworks for text-based terminal applications. While graphical user interfaces have proliferated dramatically, their terminal equivalents have been largely left behind, creating a shift to graphical interfaces in pretty much all applications currently under development. This is rather unfortunate, as the graphical frameworks are considerably larger and slower. There is also the concern of being locked in to the continued use of X11, a large beast by itself, and whatever GUI framework has been chosen. Finally, most applications do not really need the advanced capabilities of graphical display and could just as easily be ran from the text console without launching X at all. Back in the "good old days" of DOS, there were numerous text-based applications; word processors, spreadsheets, file managers, finance trackers, telnet clients, and even games. These applications demonstrated that usable and attractive interfaces are entirely possible to implement in text mode. In Linux, things have not gone quite so well. Due to a lack of a decent terminal output library (curses is not one of those), text mode applications look and act rather poorly under Linux. Some support only monochrome output, most accept only alphanumeric keys as input, and all keep a flashing cursor around even when nothing is focused. In the UltraText library you will find the necessary tools for creating beautiful and usable text-mode application in the prevalent visual style of the last days of DOS. That style is typified by Borlands TurboVision toolkit, although only a few applications actually used that toolkit. It features a look similar to what we find in GUIs today; windows, menu bars, dialogs, interactive input fields and other UI elements. From a programmers point of view, I have tried to create an interface similar to that of Microsoft Foundation Classes, with the document-view architecture and an event-driven environment that takes care of the low-level details of output rendering, focus management, event routing, and error reporting..

Requirements:	No special requirements
Platforms:	Linux
Keyword:	Applications,  Frameworks,  Interface,  Libraries,  Library,  Programming,  Terminal,  Text-based,  Ultratext,  User Interface
Users rating:	0/10